The main campaign is made up of six missions with various stages which take you through various environments like deep jungles and weapon facilities. Choosing between four weapons and a handful of grenades, you’ll have to kill a lot of enemies. The pistol is a simple weapon to use, however, it won’t cut the mustard when you’re facing down burly men wielding grenade launchers or helicopters. The submachine gun has an unbalanced spread of bullets, but as long as you’re pointing it in their general direction, you’ll be fine.

The other two weapons on Operation Wolf Returns: First Mission require two hands to hold, but I found the shotgun to be clumsy and pretty useless. Meant for close combat, I was rarely near enemies without more breathing down my neck. You don’t feel comfortable using it as at times there can be a lot of enemies shooting at you, making the assault rifle a much better choice. I seldom used anything else because it was the most effective. You can throw grenades into swarths of soldiers for quick bouts of destruction, too.

By killing enemies, you’ll earn more ammo, and there’re also various chickens and pigs that can be shot at to bag yourself a few more rounds, ammo vest, or first aid kit. Hostages are also scattered around the jungle, and by blasting off the cabin doors, you’ll free them to earn a first aid kit. Exploding barrels can be fired at for a nice explosion, and some enemies will drop special weapons in the form of a rocket launcher and grenade launcher.

There were other cool moments that pop up and mix up the gunplay, such as a stationary rail gun. Enemy soldiers come out you from the sky, sneaking around a building or from a local barracks. There are tanks, helicopters, and even boss fights at the end of each stage, always providing a challenge or two. The on-rails nature of combat is smooth and lacked any kind of motion sickness for me, and the difficulty didn’t tend to put an end to my run. Even if you do die, continues throw you right back into the action. All in all, Operation Wolf Returns: First Mission is fun as hell, albeit a tad repetitive and far too short.

You can obviously replay the campaign to get a better rank which is based off how good your combo kills are, how many first aid kits you use, and how much damage you take. I rarely dipped below an A rank, but the difficulty can be changed if you so wish. The only other mode is a survival mode where you pick a stage and fight off hordes of enemies until you die. There’s not a lot to do outside of this, but if you’re looking for something simple and quick, it might be worth a go.

Operation Wolf Returns: First Mission is a basic on-rails shooter, but its gunplay is pretty decent despite the shotgun being a little redundant. It’s too short and there’s little to do beyond the campaign and survival mode, yet it kept me interested. The story is daft and never takes itself seriously, but I found that refreshing as it was all about the chaos and gunfire. It tries to mix things up as it goes, and the easy controls make it a good jump in and play type of game.

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The thing is, while that story is a bit played out, the delivery system for it is so video gamey it’s unreal, and it works.. You start by creeping into a posh looking cliffside apartment, making early use of the climbing mechanics that let you both get higher, but also duck behind cover. Jennifer Hale‘s voice offers back-story over a radio, and at the critical point, both aurally and visually, you discover an unconscious Colonel Peter Conrad (played by David Hayter) in a weird futuristic bed that’s keeping him alive and is connected to his head. You’re going to have to go into his very consciousness (and sub-consciousness) to get to that core and win the day.

Virtual reality has offered fans of the FPS a whole new way to play their favourite genre for a while now, and Synapse is no different: a mixture of gunplay and telekinetic powers, asking you to go after waves of enemies, clearing them out before moving on to the next level, and getting deeper and deeper. The monochromatic environments are crisp and clean, only broken by bursts of colour from things you need to be attracted to, like explosive barrels. After your initial (forced to fail) run you’ll unlock telepathy and can toss the multitude of objects at the enemies, which is all well and good, but Synapse actually uses the PlayStation VR2’s exclusive functionality as well.

For instance, using eye tracking (though you don’t have to if you prefer not to for some reason) you will highlight the object you want to grab hold of, but it doesn’t even stop there. Due to the triggers on the controllers, you can squeeze them all the way to make a barrel explode instantly, or you can lightly feather it to pick them up and toss them at the enemy… and then squeeze them to explode the enemies along with it. A neat idea, but I confess that I struggled slightly with the depth part of movement. There seems to be some slight auto aim, but the enemies are squirrelly and move about a lot, and while tossing blocks side to side, or dropping them on their head is easy enough, forward and backwards is less easy. Also, the telekinesis is always mapped to your off-hand, and I would have liked to be able to switch this on the fly, making it a bit more high-intensity, action wise. You can move parts of the environment too, and Synapse is a pretty tactile game, all told.

As you’d expect from any decent roguelike, there are multiple weapons and ways to improve and progress. You are offered challenges that carry from run to run (in-run progress is reset each time you die, so you can’t keep guns you finish with), and completing these gives you skill points for a tree that does offer a lot of options pretty quickly. Within a few runs I had unlocked the option to have a health pool in each level; an uzi to pick up, and by the third or fourth run I had unlocked the option to throw enemies themselves.

There’s a real feeling of progression and that you are working towards something with the game, instead of it rubbing up against you, which in a genre that sometimes delights in brutalising the player, is quite a nice touch. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t easy by any stretch, it’s more that the progression feels inclined to let you get better, quicker, instead of punishing you for not being immediately great at everything.

One important thing to note is that the upgrades do make it easier (of course) and feel better, overall. Early doors you’ll be forgiven for feeling like the gunplay itself is a bit wonky. It’s fine, but I felt like my aim was truer than the in-game replication, and headshots aren’t always easy to pull off. That said, by the time you’re unlocking mid-run options to curve your bullets (at a reduction of damage) and using an uzi, it’s not much of an issue.

While Synapse does look great, some of the audio could have used a little work. Your cuff-based radar shows you enemy positions, health, and how many foes remain (as well as your currency for spending mid-run that’s dropped from enemies) but it almost need not bother. The directional audio is excellent, but ruined by the fact that some of the enemies just do not stop talking. As a friend of mine would say, “they’ve got more rabbit than Sainsburys” (other supermarkets are available), and the constant barking and chirruping could definitely do with being toned back a bit. You can jump into cover using your hands, but I often ended up going full guns-blazing in the early stages because I wanted to shut the enemies up quicker.

Synapse feels like a game that takes advantage of the relative youthfulness of virtual reality as a delivery system. As a bunch of ideas tacked on a wall, it might not seem that unique, but it’s the sum of its parts, and feels exciting and new, offering a one more go feel that is at the core of many of the very best VR games out there. It may not blow VR-veterans away, and there are some mechanical aspects that are simply too fiddly to be successful, but it’s a damn good time and offers a reason to keep putting that PSVR2 on your head, even in the hot and sweaty months, and it’s probably the best nDreams game to date.

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And really, a lot of that is what C-Smash VRS is now in 2023, only in virtual reality, with online versus modes. In truth, much like when Rez Infinite came to virtual reality devices, this almost feels like the idea the original creators had, only technology wasn’t within reach to make it happen. Now though, we have the PlayStation 5 and PSVR2, so it can exist, and it’s great fun.

You’re a ghostly apparition of a person, and “matches” start with you using your off-hand to hoist the ball toward you, before smashing it back. It’s intuitive because it’s a racquet sport, and if you’ve played Tennis, Squash, Badminton, or frankly, Wii Sports, you’ll know what you’re doing. That said, experience with ball-based sports like Tennis or Table Tennis will offer you a pretty cool moment when you’ll realise the “space ball” you’re hitting reacts as it should. Top spin, backspin, or hitting the ball at certain angles will curve or fade it as it would in real life, or at least in real life if you were in some form of zero gravity room. It’s quite a moment to see a ball turn as it should in reality, only in pixel-form in a modern game.

Once you’ve hit the ball the idea is very similar to Breakout, in that you want to keep it in motion and not miss it, because you’ll lose valuable time. You want to break through the obstacles as quickly as possible and progress to the next level, because a timer is constantly ticking away. In truth, it sometimes feels a little harsh on the people who don’t have enough space for a room scale experience. Played seated or standing-but-stationary, you can control your movement side to side with the left stick. You can adjust the experience so that if you’re newer to VR you will get protection from that movement, or turn it off and go full Henman on its ass.

There’s no question that C-Smash VRS is better with room scale movement, however. Here, you can get properly involved and play it like a real sport, dashing around to meet the ball coming back to you. Without this, you aren’t going to have the space to hit the ball as you’d want, and this will result in frustration due to time loss, and that’s because of how the single player campaign portion of the title works. It’s good that the sitting and standing options exist, but they do offer an inferior experience to the full roomscale one.

If you run out of time, that’s it: run is over, go back to the start. This penalty would be less harsh if the offered “Zen Mode” wasn’t also just as harsh. In Zen Mode you can restart the stage, but you still have a timer, and it’s not extended. The timer itself is one of the few casualties of the move to virtual reality for C-Smash VRS, in that it’s a fast moving game and the timer is on the floor, so it’s often not until it’s too late that you even notice you’re running out of time in the first place. It’s not a deal breaker, and the campaign is a nice experience that offers a challenge, but I just don’t feel it’s quite good enough to warrant coming back over and over, despite the rogue-like nature of each run.

The online multiplayer though, should it garner a community of like minded folks, is superb. With four modes to start with, you can get into the action and play against real people, trying to bat the entire wall back in a “control” type mode, where you have to hit specific spots on the board to push it back against your opponent. The winner is the person who controls the most board by the point the timer runs out. I won my first game and considered retiring, but such is the nature of how C-Smash VRS feels that I jumped back in. It has a “one more go” quality to it. Other modes include the likes of 1v1 (with a board to clear behind your opponent), but it all works well and is a nice way to feel like you’re playing a real world sport, only with a faceless opponent instead of your local rival.

While I’d strongly recommend playing in roomscale settings, C-Smash VRS feels like the culmination of an idea twenty-odd years in gestation. There’s even haptic feedback galore, and it all adds to the immersion the overall experience brings. While it stumbles slightly with its single player offering, the multiplayer modes really are addictive, and it’s a gorgeous looking game with a terrific soundtrack. On top of all that, it’s simple and fun, is a bit of a workout, and is a lower priced title: what more could you want?

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For those uninitiated with vicariously adventuring with super-cute white mouse Quill, the concept of Moss involves you as the master and commander of her journey through a gorgeous fantasy diorama, manipulating this magical world to help her take down the Arcane army. There is a recap for anyone that didn’t play the preceding game, and a storybook narration style with one voice actor taking on all of the different character parts. It feels like a beloved grandparent dextrously reading you a fantastical bedtime story, and is like an enveloping hug.

Polyarc has done a phenomenal job of continuing the Moss story through a series of stunning new environments, with new enemies to take on, including some memorable boss encounters. The controls work beautifully. Quill is controlled using the DualShock, but there is also an onscreen orb which can be manipulated by hand gestures and is used to solve puzzles, employ mind control techniques on certain enemies, replenish the health of your beloved mouse, and reach within the sublime game world in a manner that would have utterly blown the mind of a ten-year-old me, and still does to forty-odd year old me.

There is so much rich, sumptuous attention to detail in Moss: Book II that you will find yourself wanting to explore every nook and cranny – and indeed there are hidden items to discover that you will certainly want to discover. The already excellent gameplay of the original is improved upon and augmented with some interesting new weapons, including a boomerang-like ranged ninja star which will stick to surfaces in the distance but can then be called back to hit enemies, or take out switches you may not have otherwise been able to reach.

I won’t spoil all of the new additions for you, as the new mechanics surprise and delight in the same wholesome way you end up feeling when playing a Mario or a Metroid and discover a new ability. Along with some new gravity-based stuff, the new stuff enhances the ingenuity of the puzzling, and the overall quality and enjoyment of the game, just the way any good sequel should.

Quill is animated and brought to life as well as any Pixar character, her dextrous movements and sometimes heartbreaking reactions are stuffed with genuine imagination and heart, making her one of the most endearingly charming creations of modern gaming. I am struggling to think of any gaming experience more delightful than seeing the eternally grateful mouse acknowledge my existence once I have helped her solve a puzzle. No, you’re crying.

The sense of immersion lent by the VR is assisted by the tremendous sense of scale and the absolutely astonishing beauty of the environments. There are no issues around comfort either, save for some tracking blips and the occasional incident where if you sit back you may not physically be able to reach far enough into the screen to touch Quill. Of course, the PSVR itself is feeling a bit dated and physically cumbersome for long periods of gameplay.

There are a few niggles – most notably a lack of a weapon wheel – you need to pause the game to switch weapons, which breaks up the flow of proceedings, especially during heated combat situations. And Moss: Book II is not the toughest of challenges – I don’t recall dying much at all. But this just lends to its accessibility, and regardless of difficulty it is an absolute treat from start to end. The developers have a magic touch with the VR, and I look forward to seeing what they can do on the next generation of hardware.

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For the uninitiated, Sam & Max are a pair of anthropomorphic animal pals who form a chaotic P.I firm called the Freeland Police. Sam is a lofty bipedal dog who dresses like a gumshoe dick complete with an always-loosened tie and fedora hat. The more conventional detective of the two, Sam is intuitive and clever, packs a comically enormous revolver, but also retains some loveable doggy characteristics beneath the hard-boiled persona. Max is a chalk-white leporine whirling dervish, who is the crazed, near-psychotic opposite to his Irish Wolfhound pal. Rather than try and solve mysteries with logic and nous, he has a maniacal violent streak and a disregard for his own safety. As the cliché goes: together, they fight crime.

This virtual adventure starts very promisingly, but it soon becomes clear that it is far from the labyrinthine interactive stories we are used to from the due. You are thrown into the action as an ally of the Freelance Police as they are taking on an enormous kaiju style monster in a pitched battle. Once you take care of that situation, you are taken back to HQ and given the opportunity to shoot some cockroaches (a Purcell staple), and channel your inner Gerwyn Price by throwing some darts.

The gameplay loop is established at this point – you are given a series of minigame trials, that are score-graded by Sam & Max – to prove your mettle as a member of their crew. They follow the usual VR tropes: throwing stuff, shooting galleries, parkour-y traversal, sportsy stuff. The trouble is that none of them are particularly interesting, and there are a lot of glitchy, annoying cock ups. Aiming can be off, picking items up can be hit and miss.

There are “cases” which follow the minigames, and serve as boss battles of sorts. These take place in more interesting environs – with a supermarket showdown a particular highlight. But there are still issues with manipulating items, and some strange collision detection going on. Sometimes you are given more traditional Sam & Max fare in the form of puzzles – a welcome break from what often feels like a constant grind of shooting galleries. But even these can sometimes have some really odd, cryptic solutions. Thankfully, you can get some verbal tips from the titular heroes. And quite frankly, it is the charm and humour of the duo that just about drags this one over the line.

The voice acting for the main duo is exceptional thanks to cracking turns from voice acting stalwarts David Nowlin and Dave Boat. They are assisted by a genuinely hilarious script that is as good as anything we have ever seen from the series. Fans of the franchise will lap it up, and newbies – like my young son – will find it crease-inducing, warm and utterly charming. Your tolerance of the somewhat dull and unimaginative gameplay will have to be the tradeoff for the best This Time It’s Virtual has to offer. Frankly I would prefer to see the same level of imagination and ingenuity in the razor sharp writing translated to another point and click classic.

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YUKI opens up in the bedroom of an anime-obsessed schoolgirl, enamoured by a fictional character called Yuki The Space Ranger. Flipping open a box in front of you reveals an action figure of the aforementioned hero. All wings and sleek anime design, Yuki could have been ripped straight from a Cave shooter. You are whisked into the fantastical imagination-world of the young lass, which means an incredibly intense third-person, rogue-like rail shooter.

YUKI: Bullet-hell in VR

Some of the gameplay recalls the likes of Rez or the Panzer Dragoon titles, however the way that danmaku stylings have been implemented her is borderline genius. You control Yuki using two Move controllers. The right looks after movement, aiming and shooting, whereas the left controls a feline-styled floating orb that is used to hoover up power ups and collectables. You know how in a 2D bullet hell game you have to collect all kinds of medals, gemstones and other stuff that spills from your defeated foes? This cute cat ball thing does that here.

Apart from some impressive and memorable boss designs, the enemy grunts, AI and movement patterns are for the most part pretty dull and uninspiring. The shooting and weaponry could do with a bit more grunt and oomph, it needs to feel meaty and destructive. What isn’t dull are the swathes of bullets you need to twist, turn and negotiate. This aspect of the game is incredible fun. It becomes quite physical as well – you will need plenty of room if you are to attempt to play this one standing up. Yeah, my arm hurts, but I just burned off that half a box of mince pies I had earlier.

Randomised reality

Every run is ostensibly different – however there’s not a huge amount of variety on offer. As can often be the case with randomised levels, sometimes you end up in situations where you have no hope of progressing – such as being thrown into a crazy maze of beams and structures whilst a bunch of enemies fling balls of ordnance at you from every angle. Thankfully this doesn’t occur that often.

What is cool is the way that once you get wiped-out on a playthrough you can spend the in-game currency you have hoovered up on pimping Yuki with improved firearms and abilities. Once you rub out the end boss, there isn’t a great deal left to play for, but what you do get is fun, looks terrific, and gives a high-octane approximation of what it would be like to vicariously spend a day inside a Japanese TATE arcade cabinet.

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Using a turn of the head to steer, your aim is to reach the goal whilst being pursued by an avalanche. This rapidly accelerating snowslide has been triggered by – you guessed it – fracking. I would have never guessed that the controversial method of gas extraction would give us one of the most entertaining games of the year,  but that’s 2021.

Fracked: blast and climb

Once you have negotiated this life or death Ski Sunday scenario, it is time for the meat and drink of the game. Namely, the FPS action. Developer nDreams has done extremely well getting a tune out of the ancient Move controllers. You don’t just use them to blast your enemies. But also to climb, negotiate zipwires, and operate environmental puzzles. There’s a well implemented cover system that allows you to grab onto the cover and then peer around it. You can comfortably play this from a seated position, with one controller used to wield your firearm and the other used for moving and to go in and out of cover and grab onto stuff. It all works so well that I am pleased to say I had absolutely zero issues with the controls.

This is a seriously smooth and intuitive experience. There are loads of comfort settings and parameters you can tweak to ensure the best possible time is had by all, which is just lovely. It also made me a bit sad, as I imagined how well this kind of setup could have worked for one of the most crushingly disappointing motion-controlled experiences of my life. Capcom, if you are listening, please give me a VR Steel Battalion.

High octane action

The action comes thick and fast. You’ll veer between crisp arena battles with enemy troops, mild puzzling, precarious climbing, and zipping. There are also further forays into the skiing side of things, with added snowmobiles and baddies to think about.

Fracked keeps things simple with just three main types of foe to think about. There are the standard grunts, tanks, and kamikaze style troops. They all require different strategies to take down. The AI is surprisingly intelligent, and you will find yourself being flanked on the regular and having to make best use of moving around your environment to survive.

Fracked: great weapons

You begin with a weak pistol, and find a machine gun. You get to keep these two as your main arsenal, switching on the fly. Manual reloading is another control aspect that is expertly implemented. This is because you are able to virtually slot cartridges into your gun with ease. There are additional weapons you can pick up, but they are limited use and drop once you have expended all their ammo. I particularly loved the laser guided magnum. Some will argue that Fracked would have benefited from some more enemy types and weapons. But I feel that keeping things streamlined and simple is part of why the game works so well. It is uncomplicated and undemanding – like the best action movies that inspire these kinds of games.

It is a bit short, clocking in at around three hours. But everything else you do aside from wasting hostiles is so much fun. Whether than means climbing up a conventional ladder, avoiding an incoming electrical current on a zipwire, or holding onto a helicopter for dear life. The story is weak and fizzles out a bit at the end. A remote mining operation has gone sideways, and aliens are here for some reason. But who cares when you get to explode a skidoo whilst whizzing down a slope as the pink hued horizon backdrops the carnage?

Visually fantastic

Because my, oh my does this thing look and sound great. Bright, vivid, almost Borderlands-y in execution. It has a splendid synthwave vibe on the soundtrack. This really is one of the nicest gameworlds I have been in for a while.

I won’t beat around the bush: Fracked is the most stylish and exhilarating VR experience of 2021. It may even be the best implemented shooter I have experienced on the Sony headset. It shows a company completely at ease with the hardware and able to deliver a satisfying and fun romp that you would have to be made of stone not to enjoy.

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This is as undemanding and relaxing as gaming gets. You play the part of a kind of farmer/eco warrior hybrid. Here, you are charged with entering a barren, burnt ochre wasteland, in order to populate it with a brand-new swathe of flora. You dig holes and plant seeds And then use a wind-powered device with a warp mechanic to accelerate time, and in turn, the growth of your mystical shrubbery.

Winds & Leaves: Harvest & plant

Your trees will in turn yield fruits, which of course you can harvest, and plant. You do this by grabbing onto the trees with your Move controllers and ascending them to reach your bounty. Not much more is asked of you other than to perpetually sow more and more crops. If you stray from the pre-ordained farming areas your energy, represented by an odd wooden vessel, will deplete and you get whisked back into a safe spot.

There are certain areas where only specific types of seed will grow successfully. This adds a mild puzzle element where you need to match certain symbols to plant the different seed varieties. To begin with, there is a tutorial which tries to explain the rules and conventions of your agricultural travails. But I found that the text boxes are easy to accidentally skip via your movement. It led to an initial period of confusion, but this isn’t actually a bad thing. It means that there is a certain mystery to proceedings. You are dropped into this strange wasteland and try to figure out your part in the grand scheme of things.

Great looking, despite the pop-in

The gameworld is great to look at. Seeing the trees bloom from beneath your feet is a genuinely thrilling experience. There are some jarring instances of pop-in, mind you. This causes trees to suddenly looming into view as you stroll through the forest. The VR aspect and controls work well. Wind & Leaves provides a gentle, undemanding few hours’ worth of entertainment completely at odds with some of the more high-octane romps emerging for PSVR.

This will not be for everyone. Even my Minecraft-loving eight year old baulked at this one for being too slow for his tastes. And I suspect this will not be an uncommon reaction. This charming jaunt was a delightful, verdant explosion of summer, underpinned with a sound ecological message.

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It’s storytelling is fairly clumsy. While I commend Rebellion for bothering, the issues arose early. As the game opens, your Italian sniper is reminiscing about his past, watching a family cavort in their garden while reminding us that, no matter how cool a slow-motion kill-cam is, war is hell. Only I’m not listening. Like, at all. Instead I’m faffing with the stuff in front of me, wondering if I can pick any of it up and throw it at the family. Not out of malice, but because that kind of thing is cool. Sadly I can’t, and by the time I’ve come to terms with it, the tableau is fading and the scene is seguing into some military base or another.

Sniper Elite VR: Exhilarating kill-shots

Now I’m in more familiar territory. Things are exploding, people are running. As I fumble with my rifle I half-hear the word “tank” and my ears prick up like a dog hearing the word “walkies”. Unfortunately, the opportunity to one-shot a Panzer from the nearby rooftop does not present itself. Obviously Sniper Elite VR thinks I came here to sight-see. It’s fine. There’ll be heads to pop later.

Sure enough, it’s not long before my prayers are answered. After roughly four attempts I grab the handgun the game offers me with the air of a man who has a burger in one hand but must also burden himself with celery. I also follow the on-screen instructions on how to load my rifle, and learn that I must chamber a round between each shot on this particular gun. I will then proceed to forget this fact every three seconds for the next forty-five minutes.

Anyone who has played a sniper game in VR will know that it’s not easy. You can’t correctly triangulate the rifle without a solid grip, and so achieving a steady hand is about as likely as slicing the top off an egg while on a rollercoaster. Instead, you have to rely on the fact that you can squeeze the left trigger to enter Focus Mode. This slows your character’s breathing, forces the reticule to move less, and allows you a better chance to hit your target.

Snipe train

My biggest problem with the shooting in Sniper Elite VR is that immersion simply goes out the window. I played on Oculus Quest 2, and whenever I automatically crouched with my real legs, I’d lose vision or find myself stuck in my own ammo belt. Instead you have to push a button to crouch, which isn’t the end of the world. Much more of a problem is that when I brought my hands up to a point that the imaginary rifle felt somewhat comfortable, I’d lose vision down the sight. I was constantly compensating for this, which ruined my enjoyment over and over again.

I hasten to course-correct this review before you begin to think I didn’t like the game. In actual fact I really enjoyed a lot of it. Nailing a long distance shot is an exhilarating feeling, especially as there’s an option to leave bullet-tracking on. And yes, that means if you want to shoot a Nazi directly through the spleen and follow the bullet’s entire journey like you’re an unlucky fly with a high calibre round stuck up its arse, you can. Really, the narrative becomes less and less important in direct parallel to how competent you become with the rifles. You just don’t need it. All you’ll want to do is get back out there and snipe. If you want to turn the accessibility options off and contend with wind resistance and bullet drop, etc, you can do that too. I didn’t, because I have the hand-eye coordination of a drunk gibbon.

Reverting to snipe

That said, it becomes irritating every time Sniper Elite VR stops you sniping and makes you shoot people with handguns and machine guns. I’ve played plenty of VR games with shooting mechanics, from Arizona Sunshine to SuperHOT to Pistol Whip. I know how satisfying it can be to put virtual holes in virtual heads. Sadly, unless you’re sniping, Sniper Elite VR misses the mark more often than not. Other weapons feel imprecise and sluggish, and don’t even bother with the melee attack. As a result, any time I had to indulge in close combat I got really apathetic towards the whole experience.

I will commend the comfort options though. As someone who gets motion sickness from walking to the loo too quickly, having the option to teleport and snap-turn was a plus. You can also play the whole game sitting down if you want to, though try to avoid slamming your head down on the desk when you instinctively duck a tank round. This hurts almost as much as an actual tank round in the face. Believe me.

Sniper Elite VR: Make every shot count

Graphically, Sniper Elite VR does a decent enough job. Obviously you’ll have a better experience on Rift than on Quest, but it’s not awful either way. Textures are a little feathery and the level of detail is low, but the important things are there. The slow-motion Nazi kill-cam, for example, is still great. Ultimately, Sniper Elite VR has the goods where it counts. If you can find the right level of comfort or, perhaps, the right position, the sniping is very good. Moving through the stages is easy regardless of your preferred comfort level. And it’s exciting.

Popping up to nail that perfect shot while bullets click-clack off the wall by your face is thrilling. Hitting the perfect trajectory to smash another sniper’s eyeball to mush like that one bit in Saving Private Ryan is excellent. It’s just a shame that any time you’re not actively sniping, you’ll be really, really wishing you were.

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The main premise of Pistol Whip is to get the highest score possible by picking levels – or scenes – to play through and shoot in time to the music. Each level has a different theme and setting. Espionage, anime, and science fiction are only a few of the inspirations for the level design, and each one has a different track from a wide range of artists off the Kannibalen Records label. Whether you’re a fan or not, the thumping dubstep, electro, and trap tunes make your eyes water in the best way imaginable.

Remember that scene in the first John Wick where he makes his way through the nightclub in search of Iosef Tarasov? The heaving beats and flashing lights, the river of bullets, the excitement. Pistol Whip delivers this kind of experience, but turns up the intensity to levels you never knew possible. Taking the responsibility of having to run means your sole responsibility is shooting the bad guys and dodging bullets. You’ll start off with one pistol, and as you move through the different scenes (which there are loads of), three enemy types will appear. Some will only take a single bullet to take down, others two, and the final one requires at least four bullets to make them disappear.

As the beats ravish your senses, firing bullets in time to the music nets you more points. If you get shot, you can replenish health by killing enough enemies in quick succession. Reloading is easy, whereby pointing the gun down to the ground refills your magazine. Sometimes you’ll be firing at more than five people at a time, at the same time trying to dodge bullets. A simple move of the head will get you out of the line of fire, but trying to shoot and evade enemy fire can be particularly challenging. Walls and low ceilings will also require you to duck and move out of the way, making Pistol Whip as much a workout than a shootout.

There’re are a surprising amount of options to make the game harder. Modifications like Deadeye mean you don’t have any assistance when firing at your enemies. You can choose to Dual Wield two pistols with the Move Controllers, but you’re rewarded for accuracy, so it all depends on what your play style is. You can also remove obstacles allowing you to focus solely on shooting, but this will take 20% off what your score would be if you were playing without these modifiers. You can also play around with your gun controls, including an option to chance the recoil. All of these options make Pistol Whip more challenging, forcing you to weigh up the risk and reward of your choices.

I love the aesthetic so much. It is one of the nicest looking games on PSVR, and has a mix of different styles that feel familiar as well as original. Every environment reacts to the music – like a heartbeat – as the rhythm moves in time with every beat. I enjoyed every level. Some are harder than others. Some are more intense whilst others opt for endurance, but they all offer something special. What I did love about Pistol Whip is the option to play any level at any time, meaning your not limited by progression. If you’re struggling with one you can move onto the next one without frustration seeping in.

There’s an element of customisation in your pistols which adds a nice touch to how your weapons look as your fire them off at your enemies. You can chance the colour and pattern, as well as select a range of gun styles. You can even change the sound of when you pull the trigger, including that satisfying silencer squeezing well-placed bullets at your enemies. It’s no surprise that Pistol Whip is heavily inspired by John Wick, so much so that there’s a Baba Yaga Collection of guns straight from the movies. If you didn’t feel like the legendary assassin before, you certainly will now.

Pistol Whip is my favourite PSVR game of all time. The excitement of moving through the gorgeous levels whilst firing your gun in different directions, all whilst listening to an exhilarating soundtrack make it feel like nothing I’ve played before. With three difficulty levels, multiple gun controls, and various modifiers, you’re given plenty of control in how you play as well as making the game as challenging or as easy as you want.

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Camouflaj has managed to do a decent job of utilising the ancient Move Controllers and allowing you to fly around in a wide open space with a fair amount of control. Your repulsors blast you through the air, and by moving your arms and hands, you dictate whether you ascend or descend, move backwards, or blast forward. Slight movements of the Move Controllers as you fly across the sky feel significant, but you’ll need to remain standing for complete control. It might take a bit of time to get used to, but you’ll soon enjoy the freedom the suit provides. As soon as you start to incorporate your firepower, getting around and shooting missiles becomes a skill that is quite difficult to master.

Once you do start to piece everything together, there’s nothing quite like taking out a series of drones with your missiles whilst gliding through the air to avoid damage. Iron Man VR gradually builds you up so you’re not trying to do too much to soon. The main opening mission where you rescue Pepper Potts from a plummeting aeroplane is exhilarating. Trying to fix the plane by putting out fires and bending metal back in place, all while avoiding debris and shooting at drones gives you plenty to do, making the most of all of the new abilities you begin to learn.

There’s a decent amount of weaponry on offer. Before you start to upgrade, you’ve got standard blasters, your repulsors that allow you to fly, and the ability to punch through the sky/your enemies. Between the main missions, you can begin to upgrade your suit, but there’s no real sense of achievement. Everything is easy to unlock, and whilst the range of augmentations to your entire suit do help, it always felt like more of “another thing to do”. Most of the weapons can be used against the various drone models, but you’ll often find yourself using the same ones throughout.

The story follows Tony Stark after he announces to the world that he is Iron Man. It’s a typical story with no real excitement or revelations. You’ve seen or read it all before, and there’s nothing likely to keep you hooked on how the plot grows. Between the repetitive missions where you’re shooting a lot of drones and returning to your mansion, there’s very little else. Whilst it starts off strong, the novelty wears off and you’re never given anything else along the way. It’s a shame because it’s quite exciting at first. Ava Starr AKA Ghost, is the main antagonist, and although she had a great narrative in the 2018 film Ant-Man and the Wasp, she’s nothing more than a throwaway character here.

Iron Man VR has some nice environments, but overall it looks rather rough. It’s disappointing because the opening sections show off the best the game has to offer. When you head to Shangai, the possibility of this neon-lit city falls flat, with references to Oscorp and AIM feeling deflated by the bland look of your surroundings. PSVR can look beautiful. Astro-Bot and Concrete Genie are proof of that. That’s why it’s a shame that the levels on offer look no better than the final years of the PlayStation 3 era. In the parts where you’re talking to the holograms Friday and Gunsmith (another version of Tony Stark), the visuals look better, but their are issues with texture and diversity overall. It never helps that when you look down at your body, your arms dangle like a monkey either.

Other problems I had were the long load times between almost every mission, and even whilst teleporting around your mansion, it takes much longer than it should. This breaks the flow of the game, and in some sections, Tony Stark talks over a black setting, once again showing the limitations of a system close to the end. There are some great ideas in Iron Man VR, and I was thoroughly impressed by the movement as Iron Man, but it does come with issues, most of which effect the enjoyment of wearing Stark’s famous suit.

Iron Man VR is a perfect example of the PSVR’s limitations. Although flying around and firing your blasters feels remarkably free, it’s not a particularly pretty game. The repetitive action and lack of variety in levels dampen your enjoyment, and the story is obvious and familiar. Whilst it is more than just an “experience”, it never capitalises on the time it has, and the chance you’ll start to become bored of it is rather likely.

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Paper Beast is a game from the mind of Eric Chahl – the man behind Atari classic Another World – and for saying this is his first  game since 2011’s From Dust, it’s rather wonderful. It’s a puzzler at heart, with shades of Journey thrown in to provide the poignancy of the adventure. You become invested in the various animals, watching how they interact within their own biomes, and also those they’re not familiar with. Not everything is friendly, and with the surreal undertones of the story, you’ll soon work out that nothing is as it seems. After an hour or so, when looking down onto the desert from on top of a mountain, an injured animal drags his body through the sand to spell out “this is not a simulation,” letting you know there’s something sinister going on.

The majority of the puzzles are easy to solve. You may come across a scenario that gives you no clear solution, but it’s one of those games where you kick yourself as the answer becomes clear. You may need to melt some ice to clear a path, tether some giraffes to huge crabs during a blizzard, or raise water levels in a pool so you can freeze the water and get across. There’s plenty to get your head around in Paper Beast, and it gives you plenty of tools to get where you need to go.

The controls are simple, whether you choose to use the DualShock controller or the Move controllers, but there are times when grabbing objects became awkward. There’s one puzzle where I needed to throw sand at a slippery surface so some metallic giraffes could climb up. Like other animals, these couldn’t simply be picked up, so I needed to throw huge balls of sand at the mountainside. Picking up the large clumps of sand wasn’t an issue, but making them stick in the correct place took time. The animals were trying to climb up many different ways, and pulling them into position became a problem. The concept of what I needed to do wasn’t an issue, but the execution was.

Although there were a few issues with controller responsiveness, the game is beautiful in VR. The basic palette reminds me of Another World, and the paper animals are intricately designed, not just in their aesthetic but in the way they live and breathe. What really stands out is the music. It’s a relaxing mix of string arrangements that walk with you as you make your way through the game, rousing in the more moving scenes with the capability of bringing a tear to your eye.

There are moments when you’re looking down upon the valleys whilst riding in a hot air balloon, watching the herds of animals you’ve just saved, feeling a sense of achievement as you travel to the next puzzle. Some environments are beautiful, others are menacing, but all have a person touch that’s got Chahl’s name all over it. Despite Paper Beast’s issues, it’s a beautiful adventure that never forces you to rush, giving you all the time in the world to enjoy every aspect of it.

Paper Beast features a moving story which allows you to experience it up close. The puzzles aren’t too challenging, but there’re enough of them to keep you entertained, and the game’s soundtrack is thoroughly captivating. Whilst bigger games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons and DOOM Eternal are taking up the limelight, Paper Beast shouldn’t be a game that passes you by.

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Thankfully, The Room VR: A Dark Matter is a well constructed puzzler filled with intricate conundrums and plenty of intrigue. Every room is a dense labyrinth of mysteries that have you scratching your head at every turn. The general gist is that you’re a police officer trying to locate a missing Egyptologist. It’s not long until you realise things aren’t what they seem, and soon your thrust into piecing together his disappearance and uncovering what this strange dark matter is.

After a brief look around your police station, you travel to the British Institute of Archaeology, and within minutes you’re solving the complex web of puzzles that deeply immerse you in the game. Like many VR titles, you rotate and teleport, and once you’re in one of the designated spots, sifting through every hidden clue, letter, and object unravels a tiny bit more of the mystery. One of the first things you need to do is use a system of pulleys, ropes, and levers to reveal a sarcophagus. It’s not clear at first how you do this, but after a bit of exploration you find a poster with details revealing what’s needed.

It gradually gets more challenging, especially when you’re finding smaller objects like keys, Egyptian artefacts, and lockpicks. You’re constantly moving from one spot to the next to uncover the next clue, and at times it can be tricky. What’s great about The Room VR: A Dark Matter is the support you’re given if you find yourself struggling on what to do next. By opening your inventory, you can select a hint, and quite often there’re at least three to make it pretty obvious. You don’t have to use these of course, but it gives you some comfort knowing there is help if you need it.

With so many finicky items to pick up, small boxes to open, or complex contraptions to operate, the controls are rather responsive. I had no issues at all operating any of the equipment, whether it was pulling down a rope, playing an organ by the note, or flicking small switches. Some of the puzzles require you to use a special kind of eyewear that reveals hidden messages and puzzles, and these can be intricately designed, however, I had no issues when it came to using them.

Each room you encounter is detailed fantastically, and the various locations are immersive. Jumping from mobile to VR has allowed Fireproof to go big or go home, and whilst the first few locations take place in one room, locations like the church have multiple rooms and not only are they designed well, the audio only heightens the experience. The Room VR: A Dark Matter is filled with wonders that don’t always present themselves easily, but once you get stuck in there’s plenty to enjoy.

The Room VR: A Dark Matter is an intense puzzle game that has a hefty amount of problem solving that rarely gives you a chance to breathe. If there’s any criticism to be had, it’s that each room goes on for a little too long. Due to the amount of concentration you need to give it, it began to strain my eyes with the finer details in many of the puzzles. It might not be the same for everyone, but you really have to pay attention to every symbol, line of text, or clue.

The narrative is chained together by sections where you use your goggles to view a strange glowing symbol through a magical space in specific pieces of paper, and once you line the paper and symbol up, you start to see what the esteemed Egyptologist has been up to. Throughout the rooms you’ll get to read updates from him as well, learning about the relics he’s been investigating. It’s not story heavy, but it’s enough to keep you interested.

The Room VR: A Dark Matter is a complex puzzler that gives you plenty to do, and makes sure you’re never left in limbo if you’re struggling to progress. The visuals are great, and the audio makes every crank, mechanism, and object feel real. Whilst the rooms take a while to complete, and the text and level of detail can strain your eyes, it’s still a fantastic puzzle game that keeps you on your toes throughout.

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The current Doctor, played tremendously by Jodie Whittaker, is trapped at the far edges of space and time. She manages to get in contact with you whilst you’re in the local launderettes and tells you that things are going to go bad, fast. What follows is a mix of completing arbitrary puzzles across five stages, each with a different setting. Connect wires correctly to open passages, redirecting lasers, and opening safes are just a few of the puzzles you’ll solve, and for the most part are relatively simple. Movement on the other hand is the biggest irritation regardless of how you prefer to play. You can adjust settings so that you can move around freely, or use the teleportation mechanic, but it’s so slow. There’s an option to move faster, but it doesn’t feel like it at all.

For a series that often relies on running away from an enemy, you’ll move like a slug in tar. It became increasingly frustrating the more I played. There’s also no way to move back when using the Move controllers, so either switching between 22.5, 45, or 90 degree angles is about the best option you have. There seems to be no particular reason why movement is so restrictive, and constantly moving slowly ruins the immersion and takes all the fun out of some of the game’s finer moments.

Speaking of those finer moments, Doctor Who: The Edge of Time provides some excellent guest service for fans of the show. Watching as the opening credit sequence plays out means you’re moving through the colourful time tunnels whilst listening to the iconic theme music. Subtle references to past doctors are also lovely, and walking around the TARDIS provided a nice touch. The Weeping Angels appear in one of the chapters, and having to deal with them in VR gave me a bloody heart attack. It’s done ever so well, adding a sense of horror I wasn’t expecting to see. Not only that, but the Doctor’s oldest enemy, the Daleks, also play a role in the story, and when you hear them for the first time outside the launderette, you’ll get goosebumps.

A lot of the sections require you to interact with certain objects, but it’s hard to know what can be touched as there’s no notable difference, other than when you move your hand over it and it glows white. When you’re struggling to find what to do next, the voiceover – whether the Doctor or someone else – just won’t shut up talking. It’s off-putting and really frustrating if you think you’re doing what you’re being told only for nothing to happen. An early puzzle set on the TARDIS almost caused me to headbutt the wall because the control panel was so fiddly, with tiny buttons and levers I needed to push that I struggled to interact with.

It feels like Maze Theory has played it as safe as possible, trying to focus more on fan service than actually making an intuitive VR game. The puzzles are dull, the movement is painfully slow, and the story is lacking any real bang. Think of the filler episodes where there’s no overarching story progression, and the aliens are unoriginal or just plain ridiculous. It’s by no means a terrible game, though. Some of the locations are pretty, and the atmosphere can be really tense. It’s a shame we don’t actually get to see Jodie Whitaker’s Doctor that often, and that almost all of her dialogue is delivered via audio only.

Doctor Who: The Edge of Time is a plain adventure that doesn’t push the boundaries of virtual reality. It’s more about fan service than it is about anything else, but it does have moments where it shines, particularly when the Weeping Angels pop up. If you’re a big fan of Doctor Who, you’re going to enjoy visiting the TARDIS, bumping into the Daleks, and swinging around the Sonic Screwdriver, but even then the excitement wears off rather quickly.

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Twenty-six years later, a sequel has emerged almost completely out of nowhere, and to compound the head-scratching weirdness of it all, it’s not a movie, but a VR game. Yeah.

So in it you play Phil Connors Jnr, who succeeds his late father by also developing the same innate time-looping ability. Waking up on Groundhog Day 2019 on the day of an event to honour his father’s history with the town, it’s your job to guide Phil through a day that absolutely must go according to plan.

The universe, of course, will try to stop you at every turn. From Phil’s niece driving her car through the garage wall and into the living, to the festival being cancelled and the entire event ground burning down, there are obstacles galore – not to mention Phil’s rocky relationship with this family, his distant girlfriend, and the editor of news vlog he reports for.

Movement around the various enclosed areas is achieved by teleportation to pre-determined points, where there’re usually several different things to interact with, some which help solve the immediate problem and some which are just for fun. Upstairs in Phil’s old childhood room, for example, you can sift through his old comics, strum his guitar or draw a comedy dick on his sketch pad, while downstairs you can cook a breakfast of bacon and eggs, toast, or a “zen smoothie” as your charming niece demands. From the moment you descend into the kitchen, the day begins to spiral into madness. The cat knocks over the fish bowl, your nephews break a window with an errant snowball, your brother and his daughter are screaming at one another over a booming heavy metal video on the TV. But here’s where the game begins, because task one is taking care of all these issues so Dana doesn’t drive the family car clean through the wall.

While later tasks will see you finding things to film at the event and avoiding a blazing disaster, among other things, this initial puzzle room prepares you for what’s to come. There’s an impressive number of things to interact with, from opening the fridge and grabbing ingredients to make breakfast, to opening the window to avoid a snowball-shaped disaster or throwing a mango at the cat to save the goldfish. Some problems have multiple solutions, but the crux of the matter is to achieve the primary goal – something which oddly stays recorded in the Notes section on Phil’s tablet.

Time is finite in all situations, felt most keenly when eating a suspect muffin at the event gets Phil high, or when you know the clock is ticking swiftly down on your niece smashing her face into the dashboard of her father’s truck. I’m not particularly dexterous when it comes to VR games, and I struggled with some of the more intricate actions. Items you can interact with glow yellow, and a few of the options surprised me, such as smashing up the alarm clock when it play I Got You, Babe for the 12th morning in a row, or giving a Phil a case of blanket tent while eyeing up his girly mag (there’s a Trophy for both, by the way).

I’ve always found VR to be a little unsettling when you have to interact with approximations of humans, and Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son is no exception. The character models are oversized and cartoonish, but only a few grotesque blemishes away from the Giesha’s guests in Little Nightmares. The environments aren’t bad though, and there’s plenty to see and do within them.

The writing, however, is a little hit and miss. Though there are a few sentimental flashbacks to bonding time between Phil’s Junior and Senior, the majority of the script is our Phil mumbling sarcastic asides in a bored and disinterested tone. They’ve attempted to capture some Bill Murray magic without the man himself and it doesn’t work. There are a few chuckleworthy moments, and overall the interpersonal drama is acted well enough, but it’s not all that memorable.

Also (though I admit it’s hard to tell if the issue was with my Move controllers), I did find it difficult to make certain objects trigger properly, especially when trying to cook the breakfast or draw the aforementioned dick pic. That being said, most of it did work eventually with a bit of patience and trial & error, which let’s face it, is kind of what this game is all about.

Perhaps the best thing about it all is that it’s refreshing to play a VR game that isn’t focused on shooting, driving or flying, and instead asks you to invest in a world and a cast of characters that all need your help or agency at some point or another. Occasional sudden shocks pepper the relatively short runtime, but the atmosphere and interactions help keep you grounded in this world. It’s an enjoyable enough adventure that isn’t quite aware of how obnoxious some of its writing is, but which mostly makes up for that with a mix of decent puzzles and fun VR busywork.

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But one that did catch my eye is Sairento, previously released on the Oculus Rift. Solid reviews. Ported to the PSVR and making use of twin move controllers, this Sci-fi slice-em-up makes impressive use of the still fairly limited technology.

You play a stealthy Ninja assassin in a futuristic cityscape tasked with finding and eliminating a terrorist cell after an explosion claims a load of innocent lives. The campaign sees you moving through the various districts and the environs, dispatching enemy ninjas with the Liberal application of blades and bullets.

Be warned going in: Sairento is incredibly fiddly until the control scheme clicks. Pushing the centre button on the left stick will cause you to walk in the direction you’re facing, though you’ll strafe rather than turn. In order to turn you’ll push triangle or square on the right stick to spin 45 degrees, or the square button on the left stick to flip 180 degrees. The centre button on the right stick allows you to aim a jump, which you can chain into double jumps. You can also wall-run and vault up vertical surfaces.

The verticality is impressive, essentially allowing you to sneak around above your enemy, using rooftops, balconies, awnings and signs to get the drop on the enemy. Stealth plays a big role as many enemies move in set patrol routes until they spot you, affording you the opportunity to remove them silently. On occasion, though, you’ll trigger an event where they just run at you, and you’ll need to use everything you have to stay alive.

Your pistols are holstered at your side, your swords sheathed on your back, and you’ll have to reach over your shoulder and down to your hip with the corresponding hand and a pressed button to draw them, which always feels cool as hell. When the combat is flowing right and you’ve mastered the movement controls, which for me took a long time, Sairento is one of the best action games you’ll play in VR. You have so much control over your avatar and the action is so fast satisfying that it’s hard not to get fully immersed. Switching from guns to swords is essentially for some enemies who will block your fire, which is where I struggled, as you’ll often need to out distance between you and the nearest enemy to give you time to make the switch. I’ll admit, I did miss the immediacy of just pressing Y to switch weapons.

Gear is unlocked between levels, giving you access to machine pistols and powerful revolvers, hatches, daggers and cruel-looking scythe-like weapons. You can also improve your armour and skills. Skills are the most important, improving things like melee range, jump distance, weapon accuracy and survivability. You’ll be able to slide to avoid danger or execute assassinations from above, slow time, and navigate security systems by taking out power supplies.

Between the main missions there are challenge modes and time trials, as well as a multiplayer mode that, if nothing else, highlights just how ridiculously dextrous some people are. I preferred the campaign, to be honest, as it allowed me to play at my pace and plan encounters from time to time.

You can play Sairento standing or sitting, and either is fine as long as you have plenty of arm space. You’ll be slashing left and right, blocking, aiming and dodging, and you will move around an awful lot without realising it. Be safe and give yourself room to move freely.

My only gripe with Sairento is one that many VR games struggle with: appearances. It’s not the prettiest or most detailed game, opting for an almost retro blockiness that reminds me of the early PS3 era. Character animation is fluid and your inputs are responsive, but the overall look is not particularly stunning. It goes for a Neo Tokyo style look in many of the environments, and mostly nails it, but it’s low detail and, despite the occasional sense of grand scale, it’s not much to look at.

Appearances aside, Sairento is the best action game I’ve played yet on the PSVR. It’s fast and fluid, and there are enough little flourishes in the gameplay to make you feel like a real badass. I should also report that despite suffering motion sickness in games like Operation: Flashpoint and Borderlands 2, I played Sairento for over an hour at a time on many occasions and didn’t suffer anything but some breathlessness after a tough fight. If you’re looking for a solid action game to really show what the PSVR and Move are capable of, Sairento is arguably the best available right now.

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Mini Mech Mayhem is a multiplayer tactical board game, and will have you facing up to three opponents fighting for control of a game board that changes every time someone manages to capture the Victory Square. All things considered though, ‘Mayhem’ is probably too generous a word here. There’s a distinct order to proceedings and as such it’s probably a little too structured to elicit a feeling of chaos; but what is here should surely result in an entertaining time between friends, although I have to wonder how it would go with randos.

The game takes place on a 9×9 game board with each player sitting on their own side. The tiles will spawn in a randomised fashion giving you regular tiles you can walk on, an energy orb, the Victory Square, and several hazards. You’ll choose three moves to make your mech do what you want it to do, and it can move in one of four directions by up to six tiles, or it can shoot in one of eight directions, targeting one of six body parts each of which having a different effect should you shoot it. You’ll never know what moves your opponents are playing until everyone has submitted their choices so you’ll need to think about how your opponents are situated on the board, plan for whatever actions you think they’ll perform and aim to outwit them and claim the three victory points required to win the match.

As well as moving and shooting, your mech can perform moves known as ‘Intercepts’, which can be activated on either your turn, or an opponent’s. Use these moves wisely and you can either give yourself the edge or completely mess up your opponent’s turn. These little doohickeys range from taking an extra step on a mech’s movement to other little things like rotating a shot either clockwise or anti-clockwise, or even calling in an air strike. These little moves however cost energy to use, and this can only be gained by picking up energy orbs which randomly spawn on the board during each round. The value of energy for usage varies considerably depending on the effectiveness of the move, so you’ll need to consider which ones you use and when to use them.

Each move has a certain ‘cost’ to it as well. This is separate from the energy for Intercepts and this cost determines who moves first on which turn. Moving tiles will cost however many tiles you’re moving: if you’re moving six tiles your movement cost is six for instance, while one tile will cost one. Shooting is different: if you’re doing a shot to the body the cost is one, a limb is three, and a head shot is six. The reasons for these values is because shooting the body just deals damage, while shooting an arm will rotate the mech’s next shot depending on which arm you hit, similarly shooting a leg will rotate that mech’s next movement. Finally a head shot will knock a mech back a tile, useful for sending them into a hazard for a kill and a victory point.

If a movement or a shot costs the same then the movement always goes first, but if two mech’s do an identical move on the same turn the one with the lowest overall movement cost for their entire turn will go first. It sounds complicated, but it’s actually really simple. There are a lot of facets to every move you make here, meaning it’s prudent to try and use low cost turns and try and take the advantage with a well timed Intercept. High cost moves are incredibly risky, if they come off you’ll gain a considerable advantage, but similarly you’ll find that move will probably go last making you incredibly vulnerable while you await your mech’s turn.

Victory points can be obtained by either capturing the Victory Square or by directly destroying an opposition mech, although it should be noted that destroyed mechs will reappear after a turn, something I didn’t know. It doesn’t exactly make you play tutorials, but if you don’t then many of the games intricacies will be alien to you. The thing is, even if you do then some of the games intricacies will still be alien to you. There are ten tutorials all in all, each with three sub challenges and while many are easy, others require significant thought and often a bit of imagination. There’s one challenge late on that I spent the better part of a day obsessively trying to work out and it was only after I attempted a single player match against bots that I realised what needed to be done, because the tutorial hadn’t stated I could shoot energy orbs to collect them. There was an immense cry of exasperation when I finally figured it out.

I unfortunately haven’t been able to try out online yet, but will continue to try it out and see if I can get a game, as this is definitely something that’s going to be better against others. The fact it works as a sort of turn-based strategy means that no one gains too much of an advantage from a better internet connection, although I feel it would still work as a game outside of VR. As an aside this game did give me the worst feeling I’ve ever had in VR when upon restarting my game from the PS4’s rest mode the camera was fixed, so if I moved my head the image didn’t move with it; it was a very odd feeling and most likely an isolated bug, but I never want that to happen again.

Mini Mech Mayhem has bags of charm despite not having any real characters to speak of. The television-faced robots that represent the players have a range of emotes they can display, and the mechs have some delightful little animations. The thing is, this is a game that’s going to live or die based on the player base, not so much from a briefing perspective, as you’re pretty much fixed in your place, but if it cannot maintain a dedicated player base it’s going to flounder. On that note it’s worth mentioning the lack of locations, hazards, and different types of weapons; you know, things that would give the game a bit more variety, instead it’s up to the players to be that variety, and I don’t think they’re really going to go for that.

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When I first stepped up to practice my swing, I was surprised at how well it plays. Sure, it isn’t perfect, and it in no way replicates the actual feel of playing for real, but there’s a lot to take into consideration when you first swing your five iron. You can adjust the height of your character so it tracks correctly, and with each shot you can choose to practice it or address it – essentially a term used to take your shot for real.

I found myself shifting ever so slightly to line my club up with the ball, and also getting a decent grip of the Move controller to find the right positioning on the club. Considering the Move controllers debuted in the PS3 era, they work incredibly well here. In the practice stage, you can see which direction the ball will go if you were to hit in, and at what position on the ball you’ll make contact. When the time comes to hit the ball, you’ll have a pretty decent idea what the outcome will be.

When you address the shot, the power bar indicates exactly how far down the fairway the ball will land. When you get closer to the green, you’ll see the location of the whole on the power gauge thanks to the flagpole icon. Getting it right does take a lot of practice. Even when you think the shot is ready to take, the control can sometimes drift over and you’ll end up in a sand bunker or even the water.

As I said, it isn’t perfect, but you will find a rhythm to each shot, and it won’t take long until you’re making some impressive shots. You can switch between clubs just like in the original PS4 game, and as you play more, your level will increase and you’ll get new clubs and equipment for your character. Weather conditions such as strong winds can affect your approach, and the courses have various sizes that means you’ll have to adapt your shots, even if the courses are extremely limited; there’s no rainly Scotland course or water-logged Thai course here.

Other than practice mode, the only other one is Course. You can change the length of holes you play between three, nine, and eighteen, so if you’re not a fan of the holes on offer, you’ll get bored pretty quickly. This isn’t populated by lots of courses, NPCs, and modes, but the actual act of playing golf offers plenty of realism regardless.

There are four caddies in Everybody’s Golf VR, and even though it doesn’t take too long to unlock them all, there’s nothing much else to do other than unlock a new outfit for them to wear. It’s a bare bones version of the original, so you probably won’t spend more than an hour at a time on it. Lucy is incredibly friendly, and you’ll enjoy her company, but even she can become annoying thanks to her apparent obsession with you. She’s nice enough, but a bit to clingy for me.

Everybody’s Golf VR does a great job of appealing to different kinds of players, and the variety of options will appeal to those who aren’t as capable as others. You can choose to play sitting down or standing up, as well as switching between left and right-handed, giving you more control over how you play. The game can be played with a Dualshock controller, and it does a decent job of providing an option for those not wanting to play it like an actual game of golf (i.e. sitting on your arse).

There’s a great golfing experience to be had in Everybody’s Golf VR, with plenty of options to adapt to your play style, but the lack of courses and modes will mean you won’t spend a lot of time with it. If you’re looking for something to kill an hour or two here and there, then you should definitely play it. However, if you’re a big fan of the original like I am, you’ll probably end up sticking with that.

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The basic premise is ridiculous, but very much in line with Roiland’s brand of humour. You play as a Chairopian – a dude that sits in an armchair all day – and must control Trover to help get your two dogs back, now shoved in the eye sockets of a big beaked alien called Glorkon. The game feels a little like Astro Bot in the sense that you use your head to look around the world and guide the protagonist around the levels. Whilst it’s not as good as its comparison, there’re plenty of smart ideas where collectables are only found if you look around for them.

Pretty early on, you’re given the option to move your arm chair higher to survey any potential threats for Trover, as well as potential hidden items, and this helps you a lot. Throughout the majority of the game the mechanics remain the same. You can use a lightsaber-type weapon to dispatch of the enemies, and for a long time it becomes repetitive and rarely any fun. There’s more interactivity between you and Trover as the game opens up, and it becomes a little more challenging, however, its the sense of humour that makes this game worth playing.

If you don’t like Rick and Morty, then this is probably something you should stay away from. There’s plenty of swearing, masturbation jokes – in fact lots of sex jokes – all done in the typical drawn out ad-libbing that Roiland’s known for. If you are a fan, then there’s plenty of well-written gags that you won’t help but laugh at. Some of the best writing happens when the NPCs are talking to themselves. I spent most of my time just observing and listening to Glorkon’s goons chat about allsorts of random crap, and I laughed out loud a lot.

It’s a very basic game, where you hack-and-slash your way through the different worlds. When you begin a puzzle in the first proper world, Trover just takes the piss out of it and instead breaks down the door, exclaiming that trying to solve it will take much longer. It’s very meta, and shows that Roiland has a great knowledge of video games. Obviously, if you do watch Rick and Morty you’d know that anyway, such as the episode where Morty plays a VR game where he lives an entire lifetime. Of course, the game can be played in VR, but you’re more likely to enjoy it using the headset as the majority of Trover Saves the Universe is made for VR. You won’t be able to observe your surroundings as easily, and in general the game is much easier to enjoy with the mechanics of the PS VR.

Due to its simplistic approach to gameplay, you might get fairly bored within an hour or so, especially if you’re not a fan of Roiland’s work. If you do have a penchant for the vulgar and witty jokes often seen in Rick and Morty, then this is definitely something you’ll want to play. It’s a parody of video games, fully aware of itself, and enjoys breaking the forth wall whenever it gets a chance.

It’s also quite a colourful little game, with visuals that are rather good for a PS VR title. It doesn’t have the same kind of detail as Astro Bot, but it’s still pretty to look at. Some of the character animations are weird and wonderful, and the whole concept of using weird blobs as eyes is just one of the bizarre ideas that works to bring a good deal of laughter to you.

Trover Saves the Universe is a funny, laugh-out-loud action adventure that would be completely mediocre if it wasn’t for Justin Roiland’s unique brand of humour. Despite the rather dull gameplay, the NPCs are a joy to listen to, and the other random characters that provide your quests can be completely ridiculous, but it never stops you from having a decent amount of fun playing.

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Right from the get go you’re thrown into the action, moving through a war zone in an unknown Middle Eastern country. It’s a tutorial that gets you used to the controls without bogging down the opening moments. Before the end of the level you’ll have run across the rooftops shooting all and sundry, and sat in a car firing at motorbikes and jeeps that’re chasing you trying to gun you down. It’s a great intro, and every other segment is filled with a similar kind of thrill.

You play as an Elite Special Forces soldier called Ryan Marks. Upon his return to London after his father’s funeral, a crime boss interrupts the wake claiming he wants to take over your family’s assets. He’s a proper dick, but the Marks’ family aren’t to be messed with. What ensues is a journey to take him out before he gets what he wants. Unfortunately, things don’t go to plan, and what follows is a lot of chaos and excitement as you make your way through various missions in an attempt to kill him and ruin his criminal empire.

You can play with a Dualshock controller, but I advise strongly against this. Two Move controllers make it a hell of a lot better. You start off with a pistol, but as you make your way through the game, you’ll end up being able to wield multiple weapons, such as shotguns, sniper rifles, and assault rifles. Moving through a hotel gunning down enemies from all angles is liberating, and thanks to the brilliant accuracy and calibration of the Move controllers, every bullet feels satisfying to fire. You have to collect ammo, but it’s never clear if you’re almost out or not, and I never found myself without ammo even if I’d not collected it in a while. You’ll find grenades scattered around some levels, and you’re required to pull the pin then launch it like in real life (I assume), providing layers of realism to every action you do.

You can’t free roam, and even though it’s an on-rails shooter, you don’t teleport to a new position. You walk or run by pressing the centre button, and you’re never rushed or force to move if you’re not ready. Also, if you’re behind cover, you can press Cross or Circle to strafe left or right, giving you plenty of control in sticky situations. In some scenarios you’re forced to run without having any control over movement, but these sections often free you up to worry solely about your shooting, and often end with a great set piece, such as jumping out a window, falling from a great height on a construction site, or running off a crane to then parachute over the Thames.

Outside of the shooting, there’re moments where you have to use certain tools to crack open safes, disrupt control panels, turn off electric fences, and more. In your tool kit there’s a lock-picking set, a screw driver, pliers, a homemade disruptor bomb, a fuse, and a lighter. You use them exactly as you would if you had them in front of you, and they all provide another distraction from all of the action.

The variety in the levels and the detail of them is impressive for a PS VR title. You’ll find yourself in art galleries, casinos, and in a soon-to-be-demolished building, to name a few. Not only do you have to use your guile and guns to get through them, but there’s also plenty of climbing, air vents to get through, and monkey bars to swing across, giving each level its own set of challenges. You never grow tired of these sections because they’re blended in quite nicely with the shooting. Blood and Truth also offers moments of pure joy that add a great touch to the overall experience.

In the art gallery, you’re tasked with vandalising it, and one such moment wants you to use spray paint to ruin one of the paintings. Naturally, I drew a big cock on it, and Ryan’s brother even made a joke, saying, “I bet I know what you’re drawing,” whilst laughing. Another bit I thoroughly loved was when you’re stood in a nightclub and you get to mess around on some decks, pressing buttons to trigger pyrotechnics, scratching on the record, and trying to blend the track with another. It’s a lot of fun, and these moments are laced throughout the game, making the entire experience thoroughly enjoyable.

As far as PS VR games go, Blood and Truth is one of the best yet. The gun play is excellent, and the variety of the missions and weapons constantly mix things up, making sure you have a great time playing it. The cut scenes drag on sometimes, and having to holster a weapon every time you have to call a lift, or turn something on can be a tad frustrating, but overall this is by far my favourite VR title, and a great mix of humour, action, and emotion to boot.

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It’s rather tricky to try and explain what’s going on in A Fisherman’s Tale, but I’ll have a bash. You are a puppet fisherman living in a model lighthouse, where your human counterpart exists above you, mirroring everything you do. The main goal is to turn on the light at the top of the lighthouse to save any fishing ships nearby (as a huge storm is coming). The mysteries uncovered throughout tell a story that not only deals with the danger of bad weather on a rocky ocean, but one of a much personal nature regarding the relationship between a father and his son.

In the first few chapters, your movement is mirrored in the model lighthouse, and if you look above you an even bigger version of yourself and the room also moves in sync with you. It’s hard to explain, but the puzzles require items from each version of the room to solve. You’ll be tasked with feeding a fish sardines, building your own ship, and fixing pipes that flood the lighthouse, to name a few, and the way in which you solve them requires some real thought, as well as plenty of patience.

Take the ‘pipes’ puzzle for example: there’s a small box with a pipe you can hold between your thumb and your index finger, but when you drop it into the model lighthouse, it falls from above you and becomes a bigger pipe that you can pick up and use to place into the piping mechanism. When you feed the fish sardines it asks for a bigger one, so you pick up a small one and drop it into the lighthouse again to have a much bigger one fall from above. You’ll also need to reach into the model lighthouse to pick up a captain’s hat, and grabbing it makes it shrink, but that’s good because it’s needed to put on a talking crab.

The puzzles become much more extravagant, and the constant change in what’s needed and how to acquire it gets rather difficult to keep with, and the controls make it even more laborious. If you pick something up and try and turn, and the item gets stuck between you and a staircase or a wall, the item will drop and you must wait for it to respawn, which can take a few minutes. Movement is point and click/teleportation, so free movement is non-existent; having that freedom would make things much easier and less frustrating.

As things progress the narration can become tiresome, and hints don’t always activate so you’re often struggling to work out where to go, but not all puzzles are that difficult. There’s one puzzle towards the end where you must light three lanterns, and I almost gave up because of the controls, not because the puzzle was hard. You can reach further by pressing one of the buttons on the move controller, but it became too finicky, and I wanted to scream. It’s a shame because not every puzzle is that awkward or exasperating, but when the matchstick you’re trying to move around doesn’t move at all the way you want it to, A Fisherman’s Tale becomes awfully irritating.

The game is designed beautifully, and even though the visuals aren’t particularly great, what it does with your surroundings is rather special. There are cutscenes that tether each chapter together and, being a big pussycat when it comes to being afraid of the sea, I had to close my eyes when you find yourself underwater during a terrible storm. The story that unfolds becomes quite interesting, but as the game ends it all feels somewhat abrupt, and you’re suddenly watching the credits not entirely sure what A Fisherman’s Tale is trying to tell you.

Nonetheless, the physics-based puzzles of A Fisherman’s Tale are beyond smart, and the level design is wonderful. The music is subtle yet moving, and the whimsical story grows darker as the game progresses. I enjoyed it, but there were times when movement became uncomfortably frustrating. That being said, it’s still certainly a game I’d recommend.

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The Borderlands series is one of the best FPS franchises ever, providing sublime action and loot gathering adventures filled with humour, great pacing, and everything in between. Getting to play Borderlands 2 – probably the best of the series – in VR is a real treat, and whilst the story and gameplay remains relatively untouched, what really impressed me is the attention to detail Gearbox has employed to make the various comfort options satisfy even the most sensitive of gamers.

As you’re probably aware, virtual reality has a tendency to give people motion sickness. Spend a few minutes in the menu and you’ll see exactly how personalised you can make the experience to suit your requirements. You can adjust how fast the movement snaps, whether you prefer free movement like you would outside of VR, the sensitivity of how you move, whether you want the ability to jump or not, the option to vary the game’s tunnel vision if you so require, and so much more. It’s good to know that the devs want everyone to enjoy Borderlands 2 VR, so providing so much customisation for more sensitive players allows everyone to tailor the gameplay experience to exactly how they want to play.

The game can be controlled by the Move Controllers, but I personally preferred using a standard PS4 Controller as it gave me more control when moving, and using the headset to move the recticle allowed for the kind of precision you get with a mouse on a PC to put a bullet in the various raiders and Bullymongs’ heads. You can drive vehicles in Bordelands 2 VR, now in first-person mode, and there’re even adjustments to this for how it’s controlled in VR. I normally find that I rarely get motion sickness, but when I do it’s down to fast movement, but the driving didn’t do this to me thanks to the ability to tone down some of the more intense moments.

The game itself is exactly how you remember it, and if you’re looking for a review of the game you can find our original write-up here, or the updated PS4 review as part of The Handsome Collection here. Whilst the game remains untouched, the new VR version offers an excellent mechanic known as B.A.M.F. Time, which slows down time and gives you a brief period to fire off you weapons in a bad ass mega fun way. It helps when gunfights can be pretty chaotic, especially in VR. Pressing Circle activates the mode and gives you a brief respite to get your bearings and get in some decent headshots while enemies move at a slower pace.

Visually, the game isn’t as good as other PSVR titles, but it’s no worse than when you played it originlly back in 2012 on the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360. It doesn’t really matter to be honest, as it still looks decent enough, and having the HUD dynamically moving within your headset peripheral helps to keep track of your health and ammo more effectively. It just depends how much you value your visuals, as some things have to be sacrificed in VR.

Borderlands 2 VR is a great example of making older titles work great in VR, and the effort Gearbox Software has put in to making sure the game can be played by everyone regardless of your threshold when it comes to motion sickness is a real credit to them. If you loved the original title and want to experience it once again on VR, then don your headsets and jump back in; the Vaults are calling!

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Arca’s Path strips back VR to its fundamentals, with your head as the only controller. It’s a simple yet effective approach to gaming, never requiring too much thought but offering a challenge nonetheless. The purpose of the game is to guide a ball around various courses and through checkpoints with your noggin, collecting crystals if you wish, eventually reaching the end and moving onto the next level. Its simplistic mechanics mean that it can all be done as you sit back in your armchair and get lost in a rather pretty world, listening to a soothing soundtrack at the same time.

There are 25 levels in total, and whilst none of them are irritatingly difficult, it does take a bit of time to discover the nuances of movement. A green triangle represents exactly where you’re looking; if you look well in front of the ball, it’ll roll at a faster pace than if the triangle appears only a few inches away from it. Many of the earlier levels can be navigated easily as some of the pathways have barriers up, but as you progress platforms need to be carefully crossed or you’ll fall into oblivion.

Platforms move up and down, bridges will need to be nudged in order to lower so you can cross, and weird pyramid-like pillars require you to hit them to bring up ledges and more. There’s other stuff like breakable walls and halfpipes that you’ll roll down, where speed will pick up and your movement will need to be controlled effectively or you’ll drop the ball and restart at the last checkpoint.

The environments never differ drastically, but their designs continue to provide new challenges. The art style of the worlds looks very much like Tearaway, which is welcoming to the eyes. The biggest issue that comes with trying to appreciate the visuals is that you can’t just look around because you’re constantly having to monitor the ball. There is an option for you to press the Touchpad, but that negates the promise of only needing to use your head as the controller.

You can play through each level with the goal of just getting to the end, but there are various paths that let you go back on yourself and explore a little, thanks to the collectible crystals scattered across the world. I really appreciated the more open sections as it allowed me to test the movement to its fullest when slaloming down steep ramps, but when having to slowly manoeuvre around tight corners with no barriers there’s still a challenge to undertake.

Outside of the main mode, there’s a Time Trial mode if little else. It’ll take about 2 to 3 hours to finish the whole game, and I found little reason to go and play again, but if you fall in love with the simplicity of Arca’s Path, these Time Trials will push you to the limit. It is a puzzle game that can be played across every VR device, and a wonderful entry game to those people who have never tried VR like your Gran or you cat (please don’t strap the VR unit to your pet – Ed).

Arca’s Path is a relaxing puzzler that uses head-tracking controls in an effective way whilst still providing a challenge. Its pretty world and calming soundtrack are soothing and enjoyable, and whilst it can become repetitive due to the similar style of level design, it’s still worth a go.

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Set inside a boarding school in what seems like Victorian times, you are a faerie – a being that exists like a ghost between time periods. At first you’re invisible to the children, but the more you play, the more you’re recognised, and eventually become a part of their lives no matter how small an impact you have. It’s a slow story, and it never really gets going until the end, but there are moments of beauty and pain throughout. This isn’t a horror, rather an eerie tale that follows the same styling as Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture.

There’s lots to inspect and investigate, such as the ‘memories’ of the children that live/lived there, and items you can interact with. There’re plenty of clues for you to find, but you’ll find it difficult to work out what can and can’t be touched until it clicks, and you realise anything that sits on its own can pretty much be picked up and looked at. Doing so can show you the next step in the story, or unlock a memory in the shape of a small ball of light akin to Rapture. If you’re expecting high levels of excitement, Déraciné isn’t for you; the story itself and how you play into it is rather gripping, but it takes some time to find its feet.

Moving around is my biggest gripe. Small panels of blue light highlight where you can move to, and clicking on the move controllers allows you to move there. Going from one room to the next is where it begins to frustrate, as you’re constantly turning at 45 degree angles, and it happens a lot, whether you’re roaming the gardens or trying to climb up the staircase. I understand nausea is always going to be the paramount concern for any developer, but there should at least be the option to move around more freely, especially as you have to do so quite a bit.

FromSoft’s trademark art style is present in every room and every setting. Characters are animated like the humans in Bloodborne, to the point that one of the girls looks exactly like Doll, only younger. There’s a lot of light browns, pale skin, and bland colours, but it fits with the story being told. Voice acting is very similar too, and even the dialogue boxes that you can bring up all feel familiar, which is a good thing when the game makes you feel so isolated.

There’s a strange sadness to the children, and being invisible to the eyes but not entirely ignored, you feel an odd bond with them. Some can sense you – feel your presence – and it’s unnerving. Not scary like Miyazaki’s previous works, but an odd sensation of trouble fills every moment. The game features a narrative told mostly through the notes you find and the memories you see, but it’s all so subtle. FromSoft have always told the best stories when you’re the one working it all out with the minor details being the biggest plot points.

In terms of the gameplay, you’re solving puzzles to progress. Sometimes it can be as easy as finding a key, or collecting items to use in one of the children’s pranks. I found that multiple times the things I was looking for were never obvious, and it resulted on me clicking anything and everything to find the right clue. Once you’ve solved a puzzle, you can use your pocketwatch to travel to the next, and you’re also in the possession of two rings that have magical properties that have the potential of bringing life as well as taking it away. There are some nice ideas in Déraciné, but it can often lead to a lot of backtracking, investigating, and pure luck.

Déraciné is a story you’re very much a part of. It’s haunting, solemn, and often sad, but you can’t help but adore the world Miyazaki has built. It isn’t a game that requires swords, axes, and vials, but one you exist in and appreciate every detail and every story point of, no matter how slowly it’s drip fed to you. It definitely feels like a first VR game, but there’s plenty here to appreciate, and it’s a definite foundation for potential future endeavours into virtual reality for the king of atmosphere and his incredibly talented team at FromSoft.

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Getting old can be tough. You learn all about getting your heart broken, losing loved ones, and dealing with the encumbered burden of money problems. It’s funny really, because that stress-free existence of childhood spent playing Tetris for hours on end has found a way to reciprocate the abandonment of worry with the release of Tetris Effect. As I sat down for the first time with it, the stress of everyday life lifted, if only for a while. I lost myself in each of the many levels, as the visuals took me away and the music soothed my soul. It’s a very cathartic experience, and playing Tetris Effect helps you to forget all of life’s troubles by carrying you off into a place that wants to help make you happy.

Tetris Effect features much of the same game that it’s always been. You move the tetrominoes across a grid as they fall, and do your best to build lines of blocks, making them disappear. The more lines you clear at once earns you more points (four lines being a ‘Tetris’), but as time ticks on the blocks start to move faster, and that’s when it becomes trickier to build your lines. Whilst you do have to do all these things, there’re new mechanics that help you when the going gets tough (and believe me it will). With each line you build, a gauge builds up in the bottom left of the screen, and when it reaches its maximum you’ll be able to use an ability that allows you to freeze time. when triggered, and you’re in the ‘Zone’, it’ll allow you to move tetrominoes around and score points without any repercussions. Whilst it doesn’t last forever, it’s a neat feature that grants you some time to break down the blocks and allow you to continue for longer.

What makes it so inviting to play is the visuals and the music. Whilst I’ve never played Lumines, the brightness and colour of Tetris Effect shares similarities, except its amalgamation with the music makes for a beautiful experience. Some levels are underwater, and the soothing music makes it such a joy to play. There are levels set in dungeons, the Renaissance, space, forests, and a plethora of experimental neon environments that’ll take your breath away. Pair these worlds with the diverse music and it creates something spectacular. Whats more, as you play through each level you’ll notice the visuals begin to evolve and react to whats happening in the Tetris grid. Blocks spin and glow, and objects in the scenery pulse and move depending on what you’re doing in the game.

There’re many ambient tracks that evoke emotional responses, which was completely unexpected. Some levels also have energetic tracks not dissimilar to games like Thumper, and playing through these are hypnotic, akin to the feeling Alex must’ve had in that scene in A Clockwork Orange. The music also reacts to gameplay, and when you’re rotating blocks certain notes hit and it begins to feel like a rhythm game almost. Playing in PSVR takes everything to another level. You become a part of each world, and when you can look around the whole environment and hear that incredible score through its dynamic sound makes Tetris Effect even better. Few games manage to pair its music, visuals, and gameplay in such a unique way, and getting to experience it in virtual reality really does make this game better.

The Journey Mode sees you take on each world one after another, and with 30 different stages you’ll never get bored of playing. Every one has a different theme and track, so there’s plenty of versatility on offer. The Effects Mode offers plenty of different challenges all capable of pushing you to the limit. Marathon requires you to get the best score you can in 150 lines, and Master gives you a constant stream of tetrominoes moving and ridiculous speeds.

Mystery has to be my favourite, as you’ll face various objects pop up like bombs you’ll need to disarm, or purple shapes that obscure your view. They aren’t all challenging, though; you can play through various playlists that bring together sea levels, or wind levels for you to play and relax whilst doing so. The Chill Marathon is also lovely, because you get to simply enjoy the game with no threat of getting a game over by removing it.

Tetris Effect is a wonderful take on a game that has been around for as long as I have. For a series that’s 34-years old, it’s amazing to see how it can still find a way to reinvent itself whilst still remaining true to its roots. The majestic visuals and emotive soundtrack allows you to get swept away in its beauty, freeing yourself of worry and allowing you to enjoy such a pure and addictive game.

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Astro Bot Rescue Mission sees you rescuing eight of your robopals in each stage, along with collecting Chameleon Challenge Tokens that allow you to partake in exciting mini-missions outside of the general progression, with plenty of coins to spend in the shop in your ship. But it’s the way you do all of this that provides such an enjoyable experience. You are a giant robot that controls Astro, sitting out of view – being more of a camera – watching and observing the surroundings to find exactly where your buddies are hiding. Think Mario Sunshine, but instead of sitting behind a TV screen you’re right there, a part of the world, exploring together and controlling Astro with the DualShock.

The five worlds are split into stages, taking place in locations such as jungles, beaches, and caverns filled with deep chasms, creative traps, and cheeky little enemies that want to stop you from succeeding. You’ll look around corners to see where to go, and find a new route to explore. The world surrounds you so you’ll often have to look around and above you to take the next steps in your journey. In one of the jungles, giant leaves circle up around you, and you’ll have to jump up to the next one to progress, meaning at one point Astro is walking directly above you. It’s so cool to see him stood right near to you, waving away and generally being a sweetheart.

As far as the controls go, you’ll punch enemies with Square regardless of the type, and jumping can be performed by pressing Cross, followed by another press to make Astro hover. There are different gadgets you’ll get to use, such as a shuriken, a grappling hook, and a water gun, with each one serving a purpose. The water gun will help plants grow and provide extra platforms, and the grappling hook will let you pull down rubble or create a tightrope for you to walk across. They add that little bit more depth to the gameplay and helps to stop things becoming repetitive.

It’s never a chore to play Astro Bot because of how lovely it is. Visually – despite the PSVR’s limited resolution – there’s so much going on that you’re constantly fascinated by your surroundings. Astro won’t always be walking in front of you; sometimes he’ll have to jump down into a pit below or climb up a succession of rock faces, and it pushes you to remain immersed in the game. On completing a stage, your robot friends and you’ll do a funky little dance in celebration of your success, and as I mentioned earlier, Astro is such a happy chappy. It’s such a shame VR isn’t supposed to be played by under 12s because this would be perfect for children. Thankfully, I’m a big kid and I get to enjoy it all to myself.

There are moments where you’ll have to get involved, and whilst these aren’t particularly challenging, Astro Bot Rescue Mission never forgets that you’re still a part of the experience. Sometimes, giant bees will fly towards you and you’ll have to headbutt them out of the way, or metal panels will also need you to headbutt them, making you feel like Begbie from Trainspotting. There’re also big blob monsters that spit goo at you and obscure your vision, so you’ll need to either move Astro towards them for a pounding, or use the water gun to restrict their abilities.

The boss fights are one of the coolest elements, providing you with relatively simple patterns to beat them, but you’ll also get to use your gadgets to take them down. The first boss is a giant ape, where punching his teeth and firing your grappling hook at his teeth will pull it into the skyscraper roof to knock him for six. Perhaps one of the main grumbles I have is the misdirection you’ll get when firing the grappling hook. I was aiming in one place and it sometimes fired in a different direction. It doesn’t happen a lot, but it did prolong some of the fights and puzzle solving required to help me progress.

Astro Bot Rescue Mission is a huge step forward for PSVR, and offers such an immersive platforming experience that throws you right into the heart of the action. Astro is a great character, the worlds are gorgeous and surprisingly detailed, and the gameplay has just the right amount of variety to keep you hooked. This is a must-have for PlayStation VR owners, and definitely one to recommend for those yet to own one.

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I found another soldier that tried to blindside me and put a shotgun round in his head, then advanced to my teammate. He was down, but I managed to revive him and take out the other man who tried to kill us. It wasn’t long before we heard a shout coming from our friend by the laptop, letting us know that someone had located his position; my heart was beating furiously inside my chest. I composed myself, reloaded, and headed off to rescue the intel. We found the two enemies hiding behind some of the crates and blasted through them, killing them both and securing the information, as well as saving our friend who barely escaped with his life. It was intense, exciting, and I was hooked.

Firewall: Zero Hour has finally achieved something FPS fans have wanted since PSVR was released: a virtual reality where FPS online multiplayer works. Not only that, but does so fluidly, keeping general games simple yet effective. For PvP, there is only one mode at present, but it is good enough to stand alone. Teams of four take on one and other in an intense gunfight through various locations from warehouses, marketplaces, and offices to either bypass a firewall and protect a laptop with important information on it, or steal it and take out those who defend it.

Gameplay is best when using an aim controller, and once you turn on the smooth turning in the options, it becomes a fully operational FPS. Moving the aim controller around aims your weapon or grenades and works very well, giving you great accuracy in combat. Unlike the dreadful Bravo Team, movement is free, and you can move around however you want, never having to move to a point by clicking in the direction. It is VR Siege and does exactly what it says on the tin.

Once you die, you’ll still be able to help your team by looking through the various CCTV locations. Even though matches can be short if you die, keeping the game alive with this option means your team can still become victorious with a little help from your friends.

It takes inspiration heavily from Rainbow Six: Siege, but unlike the toxic community surrounding Ubisoft’s shooter, my time with Firewall’s gamers was incredibly pleasant. I met two guys who were from very different backgrounds, but both complimentary when we succeeded or made a good kill, and picked each other up if we failed. You don’t have to have comms on, but it should be explored, probably down to the fact that the game is so much fun, even if there aren’t any other modes. We had banter in the lobby whilst waiting for the next match, laughed when we killed an unsuspecting target, and shared tactics that often worked more than they failed.

You can play through the maps in a single player mode, but it’s more beneficial to explore the maps and get familiar with them. You’ll kill AI-controlled enemies, and whilst it’s good for a bit, it doesn’t really feed that appetite for PvP. You can also go online with three other players to battle AI enemies, but again, it’s not as satisfying as playing against real people.

The biggest concern with Firewall is the amount of waiting around. I was waiting often in excess of five minutes to play one game, and when the games tend to last no more than five or ten minutes anyway, it can become frustrating. There’s an upgrade system that will allow you to spend some time changing loadouts and unlocking new skills, but the rewards are often quite low, so it can take time for you to get the equipment you want.

Like the Battlefields and Rainbow Six games, there are different classes for Contractors like Assault and Support, and all are deeper than expected. Along with the different guns, there are C4 and flag grenades depending on the class, and all can be beneficial when planning your team’s attack.

Visually, it’s not perfect, but it doesn’t need to be. The environments are still well designed and filled with hiding spots and open spaces to give each game varied tactical options, and you can always see where your teammates are via a white outline of their body. When looking at your weapon, there’s a small screen that shows the map, and if your opponents are running their location will pop up on the map.

If your PSVR is picking up dust and you’ve been waiting for a reason to dust it off, Firewall: Zero Hour is that game. Bringing the tactical charm of Siege and presenting a community that want to work as a team without the need to be total douchebags all add to why this game is worthy of your time. The shooting is great, and movement is magnificent, with all gameplay complimented by interesting environments and a tense soundtrack.

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What makes it even creepier is the presence of a mysterious guide known as The Warden, with a head made up of triangular shards, and a voice as unsettling as the Luteces from Bioshock: Infinite. You’ll never quite know when he’ll pop up, and it all starts to get a bit weird, but you need him to try and work out what’s going on – he’s all you’ve got.

At the very start of Blind, Jane and Scott are driving down a road that’s being pummelled by the rain, when suddenly you’re involved in a car accident. The next thing you know you’re in a mansion, everything in black and white, and you’re struggling to see. Being blind, you’d have thought that meant almost everything would be at least difficult to see, but much of your surroundings are visible despite the odd blindspot. Sound illuminates areas that are near it, and after unlocking the ability to use the cane earlier on, everything becomes visible if only for a few moments.

You can use the move controllers, but having a standard controller is much easier, using the left trigger to control the cane and the right to pick up items and investigate them. Depending on the strength at which you press the left trigger, the louder or quieter it’ll strike the ground. Make too much noise and it could be a problem for you, but press it softly and you’ll not see further than a few feet away. The constant pangs of light and constant readjustment to what you see actually made me feel nauseous, and ever since I’ve played VR this is the first time it’s affected me. There’s a lot to focus on while you can see, and once it cuts to black again, your eyes take a bit of a hammering.

The puzzles in Blind aren’t at all straightforward, often being obtuse or void of logic. It was one of the first puzzles I completed that had me exploring a room for well over 30 minutes to try and work out what I was supposed to do. Even though there was a gramophone playing the voice of The Warden into the room seemingly giving me clues, none of them were to clear enough to be deemed useful. There was a stand in the middle of the room with an ornament of a woman on it, and three shapes that looked as though specific items were to be placed there. One of the items was relatively easy to recover as it needed me to manoeuvre a ball around a maze to unlock it. The second was much harder.

After removing some of the paintings on one of the walls, two dials were found, and like a safe I had to twist them in the right way to open a panel there the second shape would be. The thing was, there was no indication how I had to move them, no hints – just a case of trial and error. I didn’t know how many times I had to move them and in what direction, there was just a scratch mark on the wall that must have been some kind of a clue; I still don’t know how I did it. The third required me to repeat a melody of the piano music playing on the music box. This wasn’t too tough, but the previous puzzle had left a bad taste in my mouth, thinking to myself if all puzzles were like this I wasn’t going to enjoy it.

Many of the puzzles require far too specific answers, and I began to fall out with Blind fast. It’s not the fact you’re playing whilst suffering from visual impairment either, just the answers were often too hidden via myriad curveballs. Some items within the puzzles are often required to be placed in slots, but the controls are often difficult to use, especially when picking up and placing in the required position.

Blind is a pretty game with nice art direction, but the puzzles let the game down. The manipulation of light is tough on the eyes, and the echolocation could do with some work as well. It’s always disappointing when a game with so much potential gets bogged down by its ideas, and this one is no exception.

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Well my wife certainly could whilst I was playing The Persistence! In one of the best VR horror games on the PlayStation 4, you’re thrust into an ever-changing spaceship filled with deformed humans hell bent on eating you for breakfast – and lunch, tea, and snacktime for that matter, too. It’s a procedurally generated nightmare that perfectly encapsulates the fear often felt in games like Dead Space and Alien: Isolation, except this time you’re there, living with the threat of bloody murder every second, and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

You play as Zimri Eder, a clone of the ship’s security officer. After a failed mission on the edge of deep space, you must find a way to bring The Persistence (the name of the ship) home by restarting the ship’s stardrive. The black hole that is slowly pulling you in has affected the entire ship, forcing plenty of duplicate cones to be created with varying mutations and deformities, and it is these enemies you’ll spend a lot of the time trying to kill, or harvest.

The ship is made up of four decks, and each one has an objective for you to complete. The problem is, the black hole is messing with its layout, and everytime you die rooms disappear and move – enemy types switch out and return, and no journey through The Persistence is the same. This makes the game such a unique experience, blending survival horror with the rougelike genre, testing your style of play and pushing you to the limit, especially as you move forward in the game and the enemies become a lot tougher to beat.

There are plenty of motion controls for you to adjust and find the right balance that suits you, and controlling your movement with the PlayStation controller is a godsend. You can also use the teleport function that other PSVR games employ, but for the most part I found it easier to use the controller. There aren’t that many complications when it comes to your options; you start off with a Harvester device that sucks stem cells from the necks of ruined clones as well as a temporary shield that last only for a few seconds at a time, but when used smartly it can knock enemies off guard allowing you to attack easily, or collect their Stem Cells. These Stem Cells can be used to augment your body to improve stealth, melee strength, and your health, as well as harnessing dark matter to give you added abilities like Super Sense – a perk that allows you to scan rooms for incoming threats.

As the game progresses you’re free to buy weapons from the armoury using the FAB Chips you can collect, as well as new gadgets that can make tough situations easier to deal with. Rifles, pistols, gravity bombs, grappling hooks, and invisibility cloaks are just some of the neat additions you can buy, and upgrading them as you play will make tons of difference. All of these additions will be lost if you die, but any FAB Chips you have at the point of dying will still be available to you, as will the Stem Cells.

Death can be avoided if you play smart, such as sneaking up behind the freaks of nature, but there are certain rooms that take away your ability to use your dark matter. These moments add to the tense atmosphere because not only is Super Sense disabled, so is your shield. Listening to the unsettling groans and clinking of pipes is bad enough when not in one of these rooms, but when you’re at your most vulnerable, you’ll struggle to keep your underwear clean.

Firesprite has managed to incorporate these rougelike mechanics very well with survival horror. The first few hours provide some worrying moments, and even when you’re approaching the end things can get scary. Thankfully by that point you’re more aware of how the game expects you to play, and dealing with enemies becomes second nature. Due to the increasing difficulty you’ll die a fair amount, and even though you can sometimes restart the game from a fair way away from where you were when you died, the constant shake up of the ship’s layout makes it fun to go back to where you need to be.

The VR elements of the headset work really well. Picking up items can be done simply by looking at them for a few seconds, and opening doors or crates is done in the same way. It makes the game more immersive and helps you to feel like you’re more connected to what is going on around you. You’ll also be able to open vents that lead to shortcuts, and exploring them can often lead you to a nice stockpile of health, FAB Chips and Stem Cells. You’ll also find schematics for items around the ship which bolster your arsenal even more.

It may not be a looker, but the visuals aren’t the be all and end all. Corridors are grey and dull, and many of the more populated rooms look similar, but thanks to the fantastic sound design the creation of an unnerving atmosphere is well executed. Serena – the ship’s voice to you – often pipes up helping you with certain sections, and her input becomes rather helpful at times.

The Persistence is one of the finest VR horror games on the PlayStation 4, and Firesprite has managed to do something different within the genre. The game can be tough at times, and the visuals aren’t the best, but due to the variety of level layouts everytime you die, and the variety of customisation make it a fun horror to play, if you can stomach the gore.

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Although it lasts little more than an hour or so, COTPOTA is full of neat ideas, giving you the chance to move like an ape, outwit the guards trying to protect the facility, as well as allowing you to feel the prejudice and resentment the humans have for them right from the get go. The climbing mechanic is very responsive, having you move your arms across drain pipes, walls – grabbing onto anything you can in order to sneak past the humans.

You move your monkey hands to a highlighted platform or object to grab it and pull the trigger, then move your other arm to grab the next one in front. Walls are easy to climb too: you scale it as though you would in real life, which gives you a great sense of freedom. The only issue with movement comes when you walk or run. A white outline of 139 appears in front of you, and you have to click it to move towards it, followed by moving the left and right move controllers to run towards it too. It’s not awkward, as such, but it does take away the freedom that offered when you’re not on the ground. VR is still finding its feet as a medium, however, so in time this could possibly be eradicated for future releases.

New mechanics are offered the further you play, such as when you beat your chest to attract a guard, taking out guards from behind, and picking up a gun and firing it like a monkey Rambo, but beyond the actual segments you are introduced to them, rarely do you get to try them out again. It feels like a great starting point to make more VR, but I wish there was a bit more, especially shooting. There’s still plenty of enjoyment to be had, mind you. Having knowledge of the films helps you to enjoy it more, but you can still take away a lot with the smart mechanics and controls of it all.

The visuals are pretty good, too, even if it’s only really based in the dank facility. The animations of the apes is excellent, and meeting up with Bone and Spear is a particular highlight, as you feel like you’re there with them, going through this great escape together (or ape escape, if you will, ahem). The human characters aren’t that fleshed out, but given the short run-time, you’re not really playing for a deep story, you’re playing it for the experience.

Crisis of the Planet of the Apes VR is great, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It has the best movement (and some of the most realistic) I’ve seen in my fledgling VR journey, with some lovely little touches to make you feel as though you’re doing it for Caesar, for the apes, and the survival of life itself. The need to reach the end is made more necessary due to Sergeant Richter being such a douche, and the friends you make along the way make this one well worth playing, even if it is on the short side.

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The campaign isn’t very long at all, and it can be played in co-op or on your own, with a story that lacks any real impact or narrative. Your escort mission goes wrong when your transport is attacked, and from there on out your tasked with traversing through war-torn Eastern Europe. Everything is so murky, and the abundance of brown, dark grey and muddy green makes everything look drab. Not only that, but the waves of enemies you face can become hidden amongst the colours, and not in a ‘smart camouflage way’, but more a ‘blurry, foggy way’. To put it bluntly, the visuals are very rough, and they shouldn’t be.

As for the enemies, you rarely get any different types, sticking with the familiar tropes of shooters such as the standard soldiers, the burly, and the armoured. There are a few others, but by the time they’re introduced, it’s too late. Enemies are harder to kill thanks to poor accuracy tracking. Now, I wasn’t using the VR Aim Controller that was first introduced in Farpoint, but that shouldn’t matter. Getting the infrared sight to aim at an enemy can be difficult, and with the frustrating cover system, it becomes a chore. Playing with a standard DualShock ended up being my controller of choice, and it did make things slightly better.

There is no free movement in Bravo Team. Instead, you can select various cover points to move to. Some obvious points can’t be selected, and the ones that can make you do something that completely rips you out of the action. When you’re selecting your next spot to hide behind, the camera comes out of its first-person viewpoint and sits behind you, making you watch your generic soldier move there. It rips you out of the action, and doesn’t make any sense. Distances are short, so it seems a redundant feature to incorporate into the movement.

When you’re stationary behind your cover, movement is OK, but it’s restrictive. You can move your head around to look around the cover, and you can blind fire from behind it. while pressing a button to stand up gives you a better chance of downing your enemies. The problem is, you’re never sure when you’ve killed everyone in a particular area so you never know when to move on. Moving from cover to cover to move takes time, and feels so pointless when a ‘run to the next area’ option would be much appreciated. This game gives you slightly more freedom that Time Crisis, but that’s the thing: it makes me want to go and play Time Crisis – it’s that disappointing.

Bravo Team clocks in at around three hours, which still feels too long. There are too few guns to play with, and the promise of exciting co-op just isn’t, well, exciting. Gun control isn’t tight, the environments are dull, and the cover mechanics and the way in which you move between cover isn’t exhilarating in the slightest. The only good thing to come out of Bravo Team is the fact that Supermassive must surely turn their attention to Until Dawn 2. We can all hope.

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And that’s why Moss, a fantasy adventure with a certain Studio Ghibli spirit about it, is such a breath of fresh air. Here, you aren’t the hero of the narrative, nor do you see events unfold in the first person (as with most VR games). Instead, you are the “Reader”, pawing through the pages of a magical tome and influencing the events contained within.

Your viewpoint is limited to single-screens of platform puzzling, with you directly controlling Quill (the heroine of this tale) via the analogue stick. Meanwhile, you have tactile control of various environmental elements through physically moving the DualShock 4 and grabbing onto items with the trigger buttons, while additional face buttons are also used to make Quill jump and attack. On paper, these multi-tasking controls sound confusing, but they’re just simplistic and responsive enough to become second nature, and it’s only the later areas where you’ll really need to juggle controlling Quill and moving blocks and gadgets with motion controls. Any issues relating to controls are usually down to the PSVR’s own limitations in terms of calibration, and the occasional need to have to physically move forward more than necessary. It’s not an issue exclusive to Moss, and I can’t fault it for that.

But what makes Moss are its single-screen environments, which are presented as small-scale, almost diorama-like areas. As the Reader, you oversee these puzzle rooms as you can peer into every nook and cranny like you are looking into a dollhouse. Walls can be looked around, crevices can be peeked into and secret entrances can be searched for by just physically looking around. It’s a brilliant mechanic, that is unfortunately rarely used for any meaningful purpose, save for the very occasional hidden collectable. However, it does ensure that this is a VR game that relies on minimal physical movement, and therefore minimal motion sickness. Yet even though you’ll rarely need to, you won’t be able to help yourself from trying to look at these tiny environments, reminiscent of European fairy tales of old.

The singular quest is split into chapters and book-ended (ahem) by an illustrated story that you physically flick through by grabbing pages. It’s a classically written fairy-tale that’s excellently conveyed by one sole narrator who performs all the character’s voices, and it all comes together to create something that can be enjoyed by players young and old alike. There are a few moments explained in these illustrated segments that would honestly have been better if they had occurred in-game and controlled by the player, but it isn’t too much of a frustration.

Quill herself is a brilliantly charming heroine, too. You start to bond with her as you help her through this adventure to rescue her Uncle, and that’s mostly due to her body language and the way she moves. There’s an expressive personality here, and that goes a long way: there are even points when she’ll try and interact with you (tip: there’s a trophy for giving her a high-five, which is such a wonderful moment). It feels like she’s right there in front of you as a living being: you can pet her and everything. As the Reader, you aren’t entirely faceless either, as you occasionally check out your reflection in pools of water.

As for the puzzles, they’re well-pitched in terms of difficulty. You’re never told explicitly what to do, but everything is set up in enough of an intuitive way to make it relatively easy to figure out what needs to be done to solve the puzzle and move onto the next one. There are some good little brainteasers here, especially if you’re looking to collect all of the hidden fragments. A handful of battles take place with several foes at a time, which also contributes somewhat towards the overall difficulty, although they are made easier once you realise that you can grab enemies and also heal yourself.

As creative and fun to play as Moss is, it comes with one considerable caveat: length. A single playthrough will take less than four hours, at which point (without spoiling too much) there is clearly more to this story as if the game wasn’t completed. Further volumes of this tale are clearly on the cards, but it seems like a bit of a cop-out for the game to end at a point when everything starts to kick into gear. Granted, it never outstays its welcome, but it also doesn’t feel like an entirely satisfying experience when the credits roll.

It could be argued that a game such as Moss could work without VR, and if I’m being honest, there is a lot of truth in that. But the addition of VR makes Moss that little bit more engaging, elevating this platform puzzler to something more and helping to bridge that gap between player and protagonist, which is something that so few games successfully realise, VR or otherwise.

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With that in mind, it’s great to play a game that made me do not one, but two things for the first time. Kudos, Supermassive. Firstly, voice commands aren’t a new thing, but I’ve not seen it in VR, and The Inpatient allows for you to read the lines of dialogue to the other characters, giving an even deeper feeling that you are actually there in this space – this horrible, terrifying space, one that’s made all the more fear inducing thanks to absolutely incredible audio design.

Secondly, and almost certainly more importantly, it made me shut my eyes in fear. That’s the thing about VR, there’s no escape unless you take the headset off, or just close your eyes. The Inpatient is nearly a fantastic VR game. Nearly.

Give or take, you’ll spend between two and three hours playing through the game for the first time, and the opening hour is genuinely frightening. As a patient at Blackwood Sanitorium, Supermassive is entirely successful as making you feel disorientated, lost, nervous, and scared. Who are these people? Why are you here? What on earth is going on? Set 60 years before Until Dawn, this is in every way a prequel that shreds your nerves because of the knowledge you have of that game.

You’re quickly introduced to the mechanic of finding collectibles which unlock memories of your past, and then to your cellmate who jumps from sane to insane at the drop of a hat. During this opening hour you will discover very little about what is going and why, but this works to the game’s advantage: it’s unnerving. You are clearly being doped, and this causes blackouts which allow Supermassive to flit in and out of time. Next time you open your eyes, it’s dark and scary and this has you on edge, to the point the first scare had me almost shit my pants.

In fact, The Inpatient messes with you throughout this opening sequence. There’s a phenomenal moment involving perspective which had me talking to myself, saying “I am not turning around. I am not doing this!” that ultimately made me take my first break. All of this is brilliant. Genuinely, there is no caveat here to the delivery of this opening hour, but the rest of the game is just such a let down from these moments.

First of all, I found the movement of the game difficult to ever get a handle on. The standard options to have full freedom of the right analog stick or gradual degree turns are on offer. Despite my experience in VR, I ended up opting for a 45 degree turn motion, purely because the movement doesn’t ever feel right. Normally in VR if you look somewhere, your body will turn and you can walk that way, but that’s not the case here. You walk incredibly slowly, which is perhaps understandable and initially helps build tension, but coupled with the barely present strafing, it makes getting about rather cumbersome, causing frustration, not fear. Swapping to Move Controllers mitigates some of the awkwardness, but adds it in a different way, because it’s still difficult to move around in an intuitive, natural way.

There’s a very clear moment I’d say things go downhill, actually. After a certain jump scare (the last time the game made me feel scared), it becomes all about following people around. Discovery is still possible, but it feels weird to be told “follow me, quickly” and then ignore it. From this moment (which I’m deliberately not spoiling), you learn more about the story and the characters, and the butterfly effect choices start to take effect. It all culminates in a rather unsatisfying conclusion, purely because despite the early confusion, it gets a bit heavy handed and you realise what’s going on long before it’s laid out for you.

On top of that, there’s an elevator sequence which is just poor. It freezes you on the spot for minutes on end, essentially using you as a movable camera to dish out narrative. The game looks good, and the motion capture is top notch (as it was in Until Dawn), but turning you into a motionless camera for that long removes all fear and immersion: you know you are safe, because it’s taken control away from you.

Despite a very cool post credits sequence, playing again for some different choices, and seeing a different ending, The Inpatient feels like a missed opportunity. It’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but the opening hour hints at a game it never quite becomes. For the price, if you own a PSVR headset, you can’t go wrong, and there’s definite replayability here, but it feels like two halves of different games.

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Regardless, at least with releases six and seven, Bethesda are offering something a little different, not only providing players the ability take the behemoth RPG out and about with them on Nintendo’s hybrid handheld doohickie, but also – more pertinently for this review entitled ‘Skyrim VR’ – allowing them to truly see the snowy, mountainous ranges and perils of Tamriel’s Skyrim through their character’s eyes with PSVR. And while the move to VR is unlikely to change hearts and minds on Skyrim’s merits as a game – it’s entirely the same game after all – the venture into virtual reality should provide fans with a satisfying new perspective, albeit with a handful of minor issues.

Stepping into the world of Skyrim through VR for the first time is an extremely surreal experience. As always, the adventure begins with your avatar in an imperial prison cart bound for Helgen, delivering to them to their execution, just before a dragon attack offers them a reprieve and changes their destiny forever. As the wagon bumped its way down twisty trading routes, the new 360-degree viewpoint instantly allowed me to spot small details I hadn’t seen in previous playthroughs, such fauna gracefully dashing through the dense forest’s middle distance, while my fellow captives recounted their captures. As with any VR game with NPCs, I still find it incredibly weird to see virtual characters appear life-sized and equal in stature, not just looking at my character, but staring me right in the eye, which instantly helped to make me feel part of this rich fantasy world.

What detracts from it slightly, however, is a combination of Skyrim’s age and the less-graphically intensive nature of VR experiences, both leaving Skyrim looking a little… dated. It’s still, ultimately, a 2011 last-gen game, and you might expect that it doesn’t look as sharp when compared to last year’s current-gen remasters or even the surprisingly graphically capable Switch version. Yet, sadly it also pales in comparison to other PSVR games, especially those specifically developed around virtual reality, which of course, Skyrim was not. Most other VR games tend to be smaller, more focused affairs and not 100-hour RPGs set in a sprawling open-world, though, which Skyrim most definitely is, so that sort of visual discrepancy should be expected and your mileage may vary depending on your expectations.

Even so, textures here can be even muddier than I’ve come to expect in VR, character models a little plainer, draw distances less impressive, while Skyrim’s infamous clunkiness – its stiff animations and minimalistic facial movements – can occasionally pull you out of the moment – at least until you’re full in the swing of things. While it’s not offensive to look at, it does mean that peaceful moments, like those spent in the open fields outside Whiterun, staring up at the towering mountains, simply wouldn’t have been as impressive as in other versions, if not for the fact that I was actually stood in the world, experiencing its true perspective.

That’s not to say that it never impresses visually or that it’s not still a great world to exist in. I mean, I spent an entire hour in Riverwood early on, just sitting and enjoying its peaceful river-side surroundings, which is something I’m inclined to do a lot more of when simply wanting to relax. The world’s architecture also takes on a whole new life in virtual reality; iconic Skyrim fortresses like Dragonsreach or the mountain-topping High Hrothgar are a real treat to experience in this way, and I found myself often ignoring characters and markers to thoughtfully stare up at expertly crafted towers or statues. Interiors fare a lot better, for sure, and are certainly more detailed than the wilds, so homes and guild halls really pop in VR, feeling more alive and lived-in, while dungeons too are a completely different prospect. They’re creepier, more choking than before, as you edge through dank, tight corridors, doing battle with life-size Draugr and other nasties.

On that subject, as I find life-size NPCs a continually surprising prospect in VR, nothing could have prepared me for some of Skyrim’s larger creatures. Bears are bad enough, but seeing a giant charge at you is, to be blunt, terrifying, while spiders rearing up in attack position and looming over gave me – someone who suffers arachnophobia – genuine shivers, even with clunky animations. None of that really compares to the thrilling act of battling dragons, which is improved tenfold in VR, as they swoop, hover to rain fire down on you, and land to get in your face. It’s utterly fantastic, and just not something you can explain to people: screenshots and videos simply cannot do it justice.

Skyrim VR offers two different traversal options to get around its snowy landscapes, and both provide immersion, but in different ways and on different levels, and what you opt for requires a little trade-off.

The most publicised method has been the Move Controllers, allowing you to move your disembodied hands – and therefore your weapons – independently of each other. This, of course, allows you to really swing your sword (or at least a weightless facsimile), and bring up your shield to defend, which goes a long way to make you feel like your character. What’s really neat is that the hands of your character match their race. My Argonian warrior had leathery lizard hands, but as Skyrim never had what you’d call a realistic physics engine, you can’t do anything with them outside of fighting. You can’t pick up items as you could in, say, Batman: Arkham VR, and look at them, or even knock things off tables for the laughs; you can only look at something and select ‘pick-up’, and it gets added to your inventory as it’s always worked, and this is where it’s still Skyrim to a fault.

Still, the only major downside to this method is that the only suitable way to move with the (now-ironically named) Move Controllers is to point and teleport via an arching line that emanates from your left-hand weapon, and that scratched out some of that immersion for me.

Of course, teleporting is nothing new in VR games, it exists as a mechanic mainly to assist those that might suffer from motion sickness, and I’m glad it’s in here from that point of view, but I found it a chore to navigate with, not only dampening my desire to explore, but also caused me some disorientation during combat when against multiple enemies. Just as annoying is that there’s no obvious way to step backwards with this method either, which is a bit of a pain in a sword fight, as you’re giving up a key way to dodge a blade. Worse still, it also rendered the climbing of some of Skyrim’s steeper ranges almost impossible, as mountainsides you could climb easily with an analogue stuck just aren’t workable, especially as there’s no way to ‘jump’ in this mode, and suitable ledges are often out of reach.

There is a real-time movement option buried away in the settings when using Move Controllers, but it’s likely buried for a reason. Sure, it allows you to constantly point at and walk towards a location, but I generally found it even more faffy than teleporting, and didn’t solve any of the issues I had in combat.

With that, the DualShock quickly became my preferred way to play, with Skyrim VR controlling comparably to Resident Evil VII, with the reticule moved simply by looking at things. Here, pretty much everything but the camera behaves as it does in the non-VR versions; you can move freely around the world in real-time using the left-stick, however, you do lose that ability to swing the sword. Instead, your in-game hands sit on the periphery of your vision but, overall, I much preferred that to teleportation. It’s a shame there’s not a more workable way to marry the two methods together, at least until Sony sees fit to provide updated motion controllers.

Be warned, though, this way might see you more susceptible to motion sickness, but it’s not something I’ve experienced in over 20 hours play, likely well assisted by the way that peripheral vision blacks out when you pick up any kind of speed.

As it is, Skyrim VR is unlikely to dislodge the Switch port as my current main avenue of replaying through this sprawling adventure, thanks in part to its lacklustre visuals and last-gen pitfalls, but that doesn’t mean it’s not been a worthwhile experience. The new perspective that VR provides to both Skyrim’s sense of scale and my place in its world cannot be understated and means that my desire to keep revisiting in virtual reality remains strong, even with those issues.

Whether it’s to whisk poor Lydia off on another dangerous, morally questionable misadventure, or just existing, sitting in one of Skyrim’s more serene locations to unwind, knowing that I can always jump in and experience one of my favourite videogame fantasy worlds, and through an inhabitant’s eyes, feels like a huge comfort.

The post The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

There are four beautifully rendered locations, all stunningly detailed and, if you own a PSVR or HTC Vive/Oculus Rift headset, you can have a good look around at these places as you sit beside the chess board. There’s a limited ability to do this while playing on your TV too, but that’s more about seeing the intricately designed pieces on the board. You can see the incredible level of detail lavished upon every square, and even on the surrounding room(s) of each locale. You can even play along to the sound of a hearthfire crackling peacefully. It really is beautiful game, from the surroundings to the pieces themselves.

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Those pieces come in a variety of different styles too, from traditional wooden figurines to checkers (complete with icons representing each piece) and even ornate pieces seen on the sort of boards I’d imagine might be in the drawing room of an old mansion in a Sherlock Holmes film. The old Basil Rathbone ones, not the newer takes on the character. Each style choice comes with its own selection of custom options, like playing using metallic pieces or even jade figurines. There really is an awful lot of choice for a simple game of chess, but this alone helps to differentiate Chess Ultra from the rest.

Now, you can be forgiven for thinking you might just jump into a game from there, and you can if you fancy doing so, but there are far more options than that. For instance if, like me, you haven’t played chess in about 18-20 years and need a refresher course, there’s a raft of in-depth tutorials that are perfect for that. They range from the most basic movement explanations and what the general rules are, to specific moves that are designed to teach both newbies and veterans alike. Some are worded a little poorly though, which can lead to a bit of confusion when you’re trying to work out how to simply play chess. Nothing too frustrating, but it’s irritating nonetheless. More advanced players will likely pick them up far more easily, however.

Again, you can be forgiven for thinking that you might get right into the chess games, now you’ve learned how to play or your memory of the game has been jogged, but there are still more options than that. There are several challenges designed to test your knowledge of the game or even help you to begin thinking three moves ahead. There are historic challenges that feature classic matches from the 1800s all the way through to the 20th century, which begin at a set point in the game, tasking you with winning in a certain number of moves. On top of those challenges, there are “Mate in 1” up to “Mate in 7”, which are probably self-explanatory, but I’ll explain anyway. These are essentially puzzles, laying out certain pieces in a specific way and you have to work out how to get to Checkmate within the allotted move limit. This isn’t as easy as you might think (unless you’re a master of chess, in which case you’ll probably think I’m an idiot and, well, you’d be right) because sometimes you simply won’t see the solution until after you’ve tried a few different approaches. The more moves needed for Checkmate, the more difficult the puzzles become and it’s a great way to bring something different to the table, instead of just bog-standard chess.

Beyond the challenges, we finally arrive at the standard game of chess. If you’re a solo gamer, the AI has ten different difficulty levels to choose from and all of them work very well. The easiest levels will challenge newbies a little, allowing them (and me) to ease themselves into the game before moving up to tougher levels, and these ones will probably beat you several times. You’ll get a feel for how to think ahead and watch for weaknesses in both your opponents’ and your own games. You won’t always have much time to think though, especially when playing in the (sadly online-only) tournaments, that use timers to keep things flowing. There are even 24-hour timers that can be used during general online play, giving you a full day to make your move, like an updated version of postal chess from ye olden days. This makes for a more relaxed game, which is kind of a big part of chess as far as I’m concerned.

Whether you are just starting out or have been playing for decades, Chess Ultra offers a comprehensive and content-rich experience that can challenge players of all levels. And damn, is it pretty.

The post Chess Ultra Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

In between the dialog you’ll have a chance to put what you’ve been told into practice. In doing this it means you leave the tutorial with a genuine understanding of what is expected of you in each of the four command stations. This will be vital in your adventures as it could be the difference between your ship becoming a burning wreck or a thing of legend.

The four command stations consist of captain, engineering, tactical officer, and helm. The first on the list is the most vital in the game and the one that is handed the most control and responsibility. As a captain you need to make sure the ship stays organised. When you’re commanding AI this is a simple, albeit slightly fiddly affair. When human players are there, though, you’ll need to be vocal and clear with your commands whilst making some tough decisions.

Engineering is in charge of power allocations and repairs, which will be important if you want a bit more speed to the engines or a bit more oomph to the shields. Tactical is the brawn of the outfit with the power to turn the shields on and off, fire weapons, and analyse targets. Finally you’ll be relying on helm to get you from A-to-B and maneuver you out of tricky situations.

It’s easy to develop an understanding over what you need to do in each role, although it will take a few missions to feel comfortable with it. The DualShock 4 method of control works but feels clunky. If you have the option you should embrace the Move controllers. It’s easy for them to break the immersion as well as improve upon it (considering you appear to be double jointed and able to rotate your wrist 360 degrees) but it feels much cooler pointing at something to “make it so”.

It also makes it feel like you’re actually in the environment when you’re not messing around with them. Your ship is littered with personnel and gadgets, but with your movement limited to your chair the level of interaction is key. It feels satisfying rerouting all power to the shield when a heavy attack is incoming. Intensity levels rise as you creep closer to an enemy target, hoping to get in range of scanning it without detection. As you try your hardest to find that balance you’ll soon find yourself absorbed.

When I started the game I told myself “I won’t roleplay this”, but my first interaction with someone online saw both of us talking to each other in character. I even did the Picard “engage” hand movement and delivery at every opportunity I had. As someone that has only a fleeting interest in Star Trek I can’t help but imagine the glee the game could bring to a die hard fan.

Therein lies the beauty of Star Trek: Bridge Crew. It’s a game so lovingly made for fans which still delivers a strong experience for the general gamer. Its voice acting is strong, graphics are decent, and the missions capture the wonder of space and fear of battle well. The main story missions in the game are there to help you get used to playing it and they do so in a way that challenges the player and sets up some lovely moments of combat. The fear of being in an enemy area, not knowing where their ships are, and hoping you can complete your mission before they hit you is a wonderful rush. After you’ve finished the main campaign you can progress onto the Ongoing Voyages mode, which randomly generates missions of various types for those that like to be surprised.

The urge to play these missions will rely heavily on the online community and the quality of the servers though. I had no issues with connection but, due to it being pre release, there weren’t many people online. I was able to get a crew of two and still had a great time. As a solo experience it was reasonably fun but it’s definitely at its strongest online and hopefully that community will be there.

If you have a virtual reality headset and you’ve always dreamed of being aboard a Star Trek starship then it’s a no brainer. It has a learning curve that may take you a few hours to get to grips with but don’t let that put you off. Sure, the Move controllers aren’t the greatest, but they assist in providing a level of immersion that will make you geek out a little harder. Even if you’re not a Star Trek fan this is still a game worth considering, especially if you’re after a social virtual reality experience. Just try not to become a redshirt.

The post Star Trek: Bridge Crew Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Anyway, if you’re an eighties kid (they’re the best, so I hope you are), there will almost definitely have been a point where you held a tennis racket in front of a mirror and rocked out. Then you probably turned it around and pretended it was a gun. The Farpoint “Aim” controller is that gun, in 2017, with VR. It’s weird, yet somehow very cool at the same time. Unfortunately, like almost any game that uses Move in some way, it’s jittery: if you stare at the gun, it moves, even if you’re still. This isn’t a game-breaker, but it’s a continued worry with PSVR, or more specifically, games that use Move.

But that’s neither here not there, because Farpoint does let you play with a controller. The main problem with this particular PSVR experience is that it’s just a bit boring. The visuals are muddy and blurry, and after three levels of walking in a straight line (for the most part) from an open desert-y area to a cave-y place, then outside again, it’s just not very appealing to look at. Likewise, the enemies aren’t exactly inspiring, and despite its best efforts to channel Starship Troopers with arachnids bouncing at your face (okay, I admit it, the first one made me jump), you quickly grow tired of shooting them.

The shooting is fun, at least. You’ll need a fair bit of space to play as it’s best experienced standing up (you can sit down if you set your height at the smallest the options allow), and seeing your virtual shadow cast from the blistering heat above you is a nice touch. As you collect new weapons (you start with an automatic rifle, then get a shotgun, sniper rifle, etc) you can switch between them by quickly popping your gun over your shoulder, and I found myself squinting and looking down the sights with one eye as thought I were in a real space battle with spiders and flying robot drones. There’s plenty of options to control motion sickness, too, so if you find yourself going green, look in the options menu and change it up.

Each weapon has a secondary fire mode, which uses ammo that runs out. Normally your gun will fire before it needs reloading or cooling down (ammo, though, is infinite), but this secondary ammo is the “overpowered” type: rocket launcher, etc. The thing is, this isn’t a hard game, only offering challenge with the sheer number of enemies thrown at you when it’s clear you’ve found your feet. Most enemies have an “easy” way to kill them, too. For example, the first spider enemy will jump at you, but if you hold your machine gun or shotgun up by your face and fire as they jump, they will jump to an explosive firey death.

In-between the killing, then, there’s a story to be told. You’re the guy who’s supposed to be rescuing two doctors (one who is called Dr Moon, but it’s okay because it’s remarked in-game that it’s ironic), and using your scanner on memory echoes will reveal parts of the story. After each level you sit in on a longer conversational part of the narrative, which for some reason switches between you being a weird floating head who just happens to be observing proceedings, and at other times puts you in the body of one of these characters.

Elsewhere, you can take a run at the levels to get the best scores, and there’s a co-op mode which is actually quite cool, offering another way to play, as you can genuinely work as a team, even helping your friend back up from a “down but not out” situation.

The trouble is, while nothing about Farpoint is bad, per say, most of what’s on offer is sub-par compared to other VR experiences that are doing the same thing. While the faces of the characters are one of the standout parts of the storytelling, this isn’t a high point of narrative excellence in VR, nor is it the best available first-person-VR shooter out there. Sure, there’s not a plethora of them on PS4/PSVR, but that doesn’t mean it should get a free ride.

Putting you in control of a gun in a virtual world should be exhilarating. No, in fact, VR in general should be mind-blowing. This is the thing we dreamed of: actually being in a game. Whether you’re inhabiting a universe you love like Rick & Morty, solving puzzles in SUPERHOT VR, or maybe even just shooting the shit out of things at a frenetic pace in Robo Recall, it should always “wow” you.

Adding a plastic gun doesn’t make you feel like you’re shooting a real gun any more than the Rift’s touch controllers does, but it’s a nice idea, and Farpoint isn’t bad, it just didn’t inspire me. To PSVR players who have never experienced anything like it, it will almost certainly resonate better than it did for me. Farpoint is decent, for sure, but know that there are better games out there in the VR world.

The post Farpoint Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

There was lots to like about GNOG, the visuals are a gorgeous pastel palette of avant-garde monster heads that take vague forms such as a log from a felled tree, a house, a spaceship, and even a submarine. Each puzzle is a different monster head and each one has it’s own visual style, including different backgrounds that pulse and shimmer, and unique soundtracks that sometimes play a part in the solution.

Each puzzle follows the same format: you are presented with a monster head and, very much like those toys you give to babies, you must twist and turn dials and push and pull levers and buttons to find the solution. Each monster is essentially a toy box where you first must find a way into the box, and upon doing so you are presented with a diorama and the puzzle proper. Solutions are contained within the environment, perhaps a picture on the wall contains part of the solution or a character or creature is holding a part you are missing. Most solutions are straightforward and are solved very quickly, others take a little more puzzling to solve, but none of them are particularly difficult. Having said that I did find myself brute forcing the solution rather than having an “ah ha” moment for some of them which was a little disappointing.

What I found most interesting with GNOG is there is absolutely no explanation about how to play. There is no story at all, just an expectation that by clicking around the screen you will work it out. There is a quiet confidence in the presentation of GNOG that by clicking about you will find fun. There is some fun there, but in my experience that fun is very limited, and was often replaced with confusion as to what I was actually doing. More positively, there is a real sense of play in each puzzle that I really liked, but there isn’t enough in GNOG to engage the player overly. There are additional parts to the puzzle that are not required for the solution that do have trophies to them for a small incentive to fiddle about, but once each monster head is solved there is very little reason to replay it.

GNOG is a virtual reality compatible title, and perhaps the fact that I was not playing in VR dampened my experience with it. I suspect that much of the surreal elements of the visuals and the twisting and pulling of items is enhanced in VR, but as a sit down experience without the virtual reality effect I was left feeling a little confused and empty.

GNOG is a curious game, at it’s heart it is a puzzle game, but it is also a surreal experience focused heavily on the concept of play. It defies an adequate explanation, and to do so it wouldn’t make much sense on the face of it anyway. In fact, even playing GNOG it doesn’t make much sense. There are strong elements to it, in particular the quirky visual style, but something is lost in translation and even more so I suspect when not playing in virtual reality.

The post GNOG Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

But hey, you can now play Tethered without owning Playstation VR, and it’s quite interesting how it emulates the VR experience on a regular ol’ television. First things first: the Dualshock 4’s motion sensor is the default setting for the camera, which I heartily recommend switching off. The idea behind it is great in theory, as even the menus are controlled by pointing the camera at each option, just as you would be expected to look at these things when using the VR headset. Using the motion sensor is meant to be the most responsive alternative to using the headset, but it’s way too finicky to use for any real length of time. If you do decide to switch off that function, using the right stick to look around is second nature to most of us now, I’d wager.

No matter how you play, the gameplay itself is, like I said earlier, is an oddity. You are tasked with building a community of Peeps, which you must hatch yourself when their eggs drop magically from the sky. You do this by sending a Peep to incubate it, but you only have a short window to get to each egg before they go bad. Building your community is much the same as any other strategy game’s building/resource-gathering loop, as you’ll send Peeps to cut down trees for wood, or mine for ore, even farming crops for food. But these resources are finite, which is where the ability to manipulate weather comes into play.

Certain weather clouds appear in the sky at regular intervals, like wind or rain, and they have multiple uses. You can use wind to catapult Peeps quickly to their destination, rain to repopulate forests, or use sunlight to re-grow crops that have been all farmed out (or even to hatch eggs if there are no Peeps nearby). Mixing clouds together can produce new effects such as lightning, which can be used to destroy buildings so that you can use the plot for another construction, and it can even fry the monsters that come out at night.

Yes, Tethered is a game that involves combat. You wouldn’t think it, looking at its cute, almost Creatures-inspired visual style, but it’s there. Your Peeps will automatically defend themselves, but standard units will certainly be injured even if they survive their fights. Promoting units to warriors, or building defensive structures, can help to minimise casualties and keep your Peeps from losing morale.

Morale is both the best and worst part of Tethered’s gameplay, truth be told. The idea that your community can lose hope is an interesting one, with battle and famine obviously causing the biggest drops in individual Peeps’ morale, but in reality it isn’t as deep and thought-provoking as that. Most of the time, your units will lose morale simply because they have nothing to do, constantly prompting you to assign them tasks. This is fine, as it keeps you involved, constantly watching your Peeps. But let’s say they get into a fight during the night, dropping whatever they were doing to defend themselves. After the battle, they simply stand around, eventually crying out for your attention. They have no agency, no will of their own, and it quickly begins to feel like a chore to keep them alive. Remember the original Sims? When you’d constantly have to babysit them, because they couldn’t work out that going to the toilet was a necessity, or that leaving the oven on would cause a fire? That’s Tethered’s AI in a nutshell.

At its heart, Tethered is a god sim, much like Black & White or Populous. It tries something a little different, bringing in elements of The Settlers and Kingdom: New Lands as you build your little communities and protect them from the dangers that come for them in the night. Each stage comes with its own challenges, from lack of resources to environmental obstacles, but the goal is to collect Spirit Energy from finding research books or vanquishing enemies, and many other means of course, in order to release the Guardian Spirit and complete the level. Strangely though, you don’t simply earn Spirit Energy, it appears as orbs that drift up from defeated creatures, etc. and you have to manually collect it by holding L1 while looking in its general direction. Considering it’s not always clear when you earn these orbs (there’s no distinct audio cue or on-screen prompt) and they often blend into the background, you can quite easily miss them, which delays progress unnecessarily.

But Tethered is still a fun experience, and one that almost anyone can enjoy. It’s not entirely relaxing as god games can be, as sometimes it can get a bit overwhelming when you have Peeps crying out for you to wipe their arses or tie their shoelaces, all while being attacked by weird, oversized slugs. The controls are as simple as they can get in a strategy experience though, as you simply point at a Peep and hold R1, then release the button over the action you want them to perform, tethering them to that task. A little blue line denotes what they’re tethered to, so you don’t get lost or confused – except when your Peeps forget to continue their task, and you have to re-tether them to their job. You can periodically promote your Peeps to hero units, from warriors to farmers to miners, essentially improving their efficiency in the chosen field. They can still do any job, but farmers will cultivate food much quicker than regular Peeps, and warriors will deal/resist more damage in battle.

Building is also essential to your success, as you can gain more resources from fields than simple food plants. Taverns can keep morale up as folk like to unwind with a beer after a tough day, and temples will earn extra Spirit Energy from the various sources. More temples equals even more Spirit Energy, which is good for speedrunning levels, and placing higher on the online time leaderboards. That’s not essential to most, but it’s a nice bonus for anyone wanting to get the most out of Tethered’s thirteen levels.

As a god game, Tethered does a decent job of giving the player plenty to do, perhaps too much, with Peeps constantly requiring babysitting. But it’s still a decent success story, marrying together the styles of The Settlers, Kingdom: New Lands and Black & White to bring something a little different to the strategy market, especially on console.

The post Tethered Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

The narrative is thus: protagonist Matthew has travelled to a formerly bustling tourist town that has fallen on hard times in search of his sister Sophie, but, as is often the case, something happens, and he wakes up trapped in a decaying, decrepit hotel with no obvious exit and a headache (this is something that Matthew is all-too keen to point out. Frequently). It becomes clear rather quickly that our whiny hero is at the mercy of some twisted game concocted by the hotel’s manager, and it’s up to you to solve puzzles in six different rooms to find your sister and get the hell out of dodge.

The puzzles themselves are easily DYING: Reborn’s strongest aspect. The game is frequently happy to tell you nothing, other than a few poorly written sentences on loading screens, simply dropping you into a room and letting you have at it. Nigh-on every problem can be solved by some combination of exploration, combining items in your inventory or some gentle prodding at your environment, which generally stops any of these stages becoming too laborious or time consuming. As such, you’ll probably be looking at 2/3 hours to see all that this game has to offer.

Assuming you wish to, of course, because DYING: Reborn is a particularly hard sell. Sure, the hotel that you’re attempting to escape looks suitably disgusting, with its filthy walls, an army of eerie mannequins scattered liberally about the place and bloodstains aplenty, but its narrative and storytelling are, quite simply, appalling. It’s seemingly a horror tale told by someone who’s never seen a horror story before, with a ludicrous and utterly non-threatening antagonist replete with ludicrous headwear, a by-the-numbers plot and a main character whose dialogue and delivery is so alarmingly serious that they seemingly don’t understand just how ridiculous they sound. “Holy shit, that TV just turned on by itself!” exclaims Matthew, Captain of the HMS Exposition. This wouldn’t be such a big problem if the delivery emphasised the joke, or the game’s recycled narrative wasn’t so trite, but DYING: Reborn is so focused on maintaining its serious façade that it comes across as po-faced, unaware of the comedy that it’s inadvertently creating.

It’s not that DYING: Reborn is a veritable stinker all the way through, either, even if its title definitely doesn’t do it any favours; a couple of well-placed jump scares in the game’s early offing and some decent sound design create an atmosphere that suggests that your safety isn’t guaranteed. But once it becomes clear that nothing can or will significantly harm Matthew, the game runs out of things to frighten you with, and subsequently loses its ability to hold your interest.

If you can get past the generic plot and the poor voice acting, then there’s a solid enough puzzle game on offer here. But when a story and its characters are crafted as poorly as this, and with a short running time to take into account, it’s tough to recommend it in a sea of superior horror experiences.

The post DYING: Reborn Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

This success came at a price, however. Its sequel was a stunner, but after that they started to become a little repetitive and the franchise began to grow stale. In 2005 Capcom injected new life (or should that be unlife? Undeath? Okay, I’ll stop) into the series with Resident Evil 4, and although it was a monumental success and earned many, many, many awards, it started the series down a path that moved well away from survival horror. Many fans grew tired of this new direction after that, which unfortunately led to them missing out on the fantastic Revelations games. They wanted a return to the horror of the first game, and Capcom has finally listened.

So here we are, over twenty years after the release of the PSOne’s Resident Evil, and survival horror is well and truly back with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. One year after the events of Resident Evil 6 and its C-Virus outbreak, this game begins a whole new story set in the Bayou, as new character Ethan goes in search of his missing wife Mia, after a mysterious video message is delivered to his email. Arriving at Mia’s last known location, a house in the middle of the marshes, things soon go downhill for poor Ethan. But you’d guessed that already, hadn’t you? It’s not called Resident Friendly, after all, and the Baker family certainly aren’t the welcoming type.

Right from the beginning, this new title feels at once fresh and familiar. The new first-person perspective helps to enhance the claustrophobia of the Baker house, the darkness clawing at your nerves as you explore the narrow corridors. It’s this exploration that brings back memories of searching the Spencer mansion in the original game (or the 2002 Gamecube remake), as you search for specially shaped keys or certain items that will allow you to progress. But this time, it isn’t zombies that will be after you.

Taking inspiration from the likes of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Outlast, and Alien: Isolation, as well as a gentle nod to the loveable Nemesis from the third game, Resi 7 sees poor Ethan being pursued by the creepy and incredibly intimidating Jack Baker. His mad rantings and threats ring out in the dark house, his heavy boots thudding on the dusty floorboards as he stalks you. The sound design is astonishing, the sparse score only creeping in from time to time, as the creaks and cracks of the old wooden beams have you constantly checking your surroundings, confusing you and making you think that Jack is always behind you. Unlike most of the games that inspired it, though, you can fight back if you have found the means to do so. The combat is weighty, visceral, and satisfying, but ammo is scarce and enemies take a lot of punishment, so you need to be careful. Much like the Nemesis, Jack will not stay down for long, either. If he finds you (and he will, with terrifying efficiency) he is relentless, even smashing through obstacles in order to bludgeon you to death.

That relentless tension is present throughout this story, even in the moments when you’re alone. The atmosphere is unbearable at times, with shadows moving in your periphery and muffled footsteps coming from the floor above, there’s more to be afraid of than any previous game in the series, despite there being less enemy types than ever before. That doesn’t mean that Jack is the only one to fear in the Baker household, there are also the Molded: mysterious creatures made of black goop, teeth and claws, as seen in the final version of the Beginning Hour demo. There are also the other members of the Baker family, seen through the fantastically eerie VHS tapes that you can pick up. These show other points of view from within the house, giving you control of those characters as they are pursued and psychologically tortured by the likes of Marguerite Baker, and they are some of the most terrifying and inventive moments in the game, also helping to flesh out the story.

The story is one of the most fascinating things about the game, as it is very sparse in its telling. It drip feeds information to the player, through snippets of dialogue and within the text of documents scattered about the place, but rarely gives you enough to fully put the story together. This makes the overall plot a little more vague and may make it difficult to follow for those not paying attention, but it also allows the player to feel like they’re a part of something. That kind of storytelling has been used in Resident Evil before, but only to fill in the gaps around the main plot, so seeing it used to tell the whole story is an interesting thing, resulting in me paying a lot more attention and even pulling me further into the world.

Visually, this is one of the finest games around at the moment, and it runs at a smooth 60 frames per second at all times. It doesn’t even have any loading screens beyond the initial load and when transitioning to VHS sections (although those loads can be fairly long), which is an impressive feat for such a large game. The lack of breaks, combined with the silky smooth framerate, makes the technical accomplishment even more amazing. On the way onto the Bakers’ land, in the bright afternoon sun the foliage of the Bayou is gorgeously detailed and the lighting is fantastic, but somehow it becomes even more astonishing once the light disappears. The level of detail on something as simple as the woodgrain on doors and the cobwebs in the corners adds an extra layer of immersion, which keeps you locked in the game world and more susceptible to the horrors that lie within. Those horrors are equally stunning to look upon, from the individual hairs in Jack’s beard and the squirming, wriggly texture of the Molded. The animation is fluid too, with everything and everyone moving as they should, adding incredible realism to the Bakers and a terrifying presence to the Molded. Although the lip-syncing is a little iffy at times, the facial animation on all the characters is very nicely handled, capturing the likeness and performance of real actors. This level of detail makes the Baker family even more terrifying.

It’s not all about the smaller details though, as despite this being a very claustrophobic horror experience, it’s still very much a Resident Evil title at heart. There are some tremendous moments that pack a real explosive punch, so as not to completely lose the identity of the series, especially in the third act. Early impressions made it look completely different to the rest of the franchise, so much so as to be unrecognisable, and that worried many fans. But rest assured, this is Resident Evil. It may be a reboot of the franchise but it’s also very much a sequel, offering a huge number of nods to previous installments – there are save rooms, complete with soothing music, and item boxes are back (you can store items in them and access their shared inventory at any box location), and there are even puzzles that hark back to the original games. Yes, puzzles make a welcome return to the franchise, and one or two of them are quite fiendish. There are also multiple ways for certain events to play out, and multiple endings that add replay value to what could have been a very linear game.

Although the game borrows quite a few elements from previous titles in the franchise, as well as from many others in the horror genre, it’s got quite a few tricks up its sleeve to keep things fresh at all times. The pacing is perfect, always keeping it moving at a steady rate, and it changes things up constantly, so it never gets old. No mean feat for a game that lasts 8-10 hours. This is survival horror at its best, Resident Evil at its best, and it leaves just enough unanswered questions for a sequel, but could work equally well as a standalone story. Though I’m convinced that some of the game’s mysteries will be revealed over multiples playthroughs.

Whatever happens next, Resident Evil 7 is the best horror game in years.

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Its description claims it to be inspired by “90s platforming goodness” and I expect the developer would like to think that Mekazoo has elements of Sonic, Donkey Kong Country, etc, and if you squint really hard you might see hints of those iconic franchises in there somewhere, but it soon becomes apparent that it’s more akin to those average, early 2000s efforts.

You start the game as a mechanised armadillo, rolling around levels like a low budget, neon (this game loves its neon) Sonic the Hedgehog. You’re in some kind of facility, chasing an evil frog until you eventually have to fight it. You know the frog must be evil, because it’s red. The boss fight that follows is interesting, but a little awkward due to the controls and physics not quite fitting the situation. These issues become even more pronounced when you take control of the frog, as defeating bosses sees you taking control of those mechanical animals. The frog’s bounding is imprecise, in a game that requires precision for ninety percent of its duration, but it sometimes makes up for it once you realise that the frog’s tongue can be used like a rope, swinging you from grapple point to grapple point.

The third animal also has these control issues. Playing as a wallaby, its bounding is even more imprecise than the frog, and its special ability is to jump even higher (and wall jump) which just makes things worse. The wallaby’s jumps don’t always work properly either, which can lead to many, many deaths thanks to the glitchy controls. There are moments when you need to jump from wall to wall, going quite high, and sometimes the jump doesn’t register and you’re left hitting the wall before falling back down. Restarting sections like this just whittles away at your patience.

It does have an interesting switching mechanic though, which allows you to switch between the creatures you’ve unlocked to solve environmental puzzles. This usually boils down to switching on-the-fly, often requiring quick thinking to avoid death, and it can work quite well at times. The nice thing about it, is that you’re given set pairs to work with. This means that levels are designed around those specific pairings, but also contain challenges that require extreme patience if you want to find all the secrets and collectibles dotted throughout each level.

Speaking of challenges, each level offers challenges such as killing all of a certain enemy, as well as finishing it without dying or within a certain time limit. Each completed challenge rewards you with a gear, essential in unlocking later levels. This kind of progression system is archaic and can end up blocking many players from finishing the game, despite being able to finish all the levels available to them. Why do games still do this in 2016? It also doesn’t help that finding new levels can be a chore, as even the hub worlds are poorly designed and confusing to navigate. You can spend a few minutes fumbling around a hub, only to stumble across a level you can’t actually play yet.

The levels you can play before you inevitably end up having to go back to replay older ones, have some real design problems too. The first of which, noticeable very early on, is down to the visual style. Your characters often blend into the background and that already makes it an issue, and when you’re needing to make decisions quickly but can’t see your character? Poor design. Now, one of the boss levels is so badly designed that I genuinely needed to take a break before attempting it again. It sums up the bad design of both level and character movement, and brings to mind a third design flaw that makes this battle all the more infuriating: checkpoints.

Mekazoo’s checkpoints are so badly placed (or worse: not placed at all) that you’re often forced to replay sections of a level over and over, thanks to a combination of all three design problems. You might get through a particularly tough area, then the wallaby will decide not to wall jump, dropping you to your death, only to find that you’re forced to retry that tough area again due to the horrendous checkpoint placement. Again, how is this a thing in 2016? There’s no excuse for this.

Mekazoo is not a terrible game. It shows genuine flashes of fun, and its characters are colourful and cute, and that’s why I will compare it to those average early 2000s games mentioned at the beginning of this review. The fact that it repeats the mistakes of those games, released two generations ago, shows that Mekazoo is a game out of time.

The post Mekazoo Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Surgeon Simulator: Experience Reality is an entirely standalone version of the 2013 patient hack-up-a-thon, and allows you to perform a range of surgeries on a host of poor subjects in hospitals, backs of ambulances, and in space. It includes all the content from the vanilla version minus any of the extra scenarios added to the Anniversary version, making it a little disappointing in its breadth of content. Once you’ve figured out how it all works mechanically, it can be easily finished in a single session of a mere hour or two. Mind you, it’s certainly not devoid of entertainment during that time.

A selection of blunt, sharp, and laser firing tools are available to help you perform the surgeries your patients require. It’s up to you to decide which tool is best for each situation as you perform surgeries that range from the relatively simple removal of teeth to organ replacement. Meanwhile, each location provides a different challenge, with the ambulance providing an unstable operating area and space removing gravity. Your goal is to perform the surgery quickly and efficiently enough so your patient doesn’t bleed out. You’re not required to put removed organs back and reattach them, nor do you need to attach the new organs, simply remove what’s bad and throw in what’s good. Job done, your patient will now (probably) live.

Of course, realism is not on the cards in Surgeon Simulator; the surgeries are rife with gory bone-crunching and organ-squishing slapstick comedy. It’s delightfully deranged. The cartoon aesthetic immediately sells you on this light-hearted theme, with solid colours and gentle textures. Meanwhile, a physics engine designed for hilarity makes your surgery attempts look like a lost Mr. Bean episode.

At the beginning of a surgery there’ll be a host of useless internal organs and structures that need breaking and removing in order to get to your primary objective. Rib cages need smashing, either with bone saws, hammers, or any blunt object you can find – such as the theatre lights or an alarm clock. Organs need cutting with scalpels and removing, before being delicately placed somewhere so they can be reattached later. Or you could simply laser or yank them out, then throw them away haphazardly. Meanwhile, your operating theatre can fill up with the organs and bone fragments that you’ve been throwing around, as well as your tools and surrounding equipment, which so easily goes flying with the slightest nudge. It’s funny to play and equally funny to watch.

With the physics sending objects flying around the operating theatre so easily, it can get a little frustrating. You’re fighting against the clock to finish your surgery before your patient bleeds out, and dropping a crucial tool and struggling to pick it up again can lead to plenty of failed attempts. Furthermore, if you try putting your hand where it doesn’t belong, like through a table or your patient, it’ll automatically phase through and show up as skeletal, preventing you from physically interacting with anything. And unfortunately this occurs frequently, costing you precious time.

Where the original non-VR version had intentional janky mouse control to aid in the slapstick, Surgeon Simulator: Experience Reality is far more intuitive, as your VR motion controllers are more analogous to your hands. Moreover, the feedback you get from hitting and cutting is excellent, and goes a long way in immersing you in the ridiculous medical scenarios. It’s still inaccurate though, leading to plenty of the aforementioned hand phasing through things. Furthermore, having to use the grip buttons on the side of the HTC Vive wands to close your hand around objects is a little awkward.

The transition from ordinary to VR ends up not quite working for Surgeon Simulator. The intentionally awkward controls made the original version frustrating in the right kind of way but feel off in VR. It hurts the immersion, reminding you that there are artificial limitations imposed on your movements. Meanwhile, the lack of Anniversary content makes the package incomplete, and the standalone state and price point feel a little unfair to owners of the original that want to experience it in VR. However, it’s very much still the funny and fun surgery silliness that it always has been, making its VR variant’s prognosis still good.

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Windlands tells the tale of a lost civilisation, once a mighty empire, whose cities and towers were built with a mysterious power gained from sacred crystals, crystals which have now been smashed to pieces and scattered across the ruins of three regions – and it’s up to you, guardian, to go get them back.

In order to do this you’ll need to make use of a set of hooks for grappling, or grappling hooks as they’re commonly known, to attach yourself to objects as you swing around levels looking for crystal shards and broken tablets to piece together the very slight story and unlock progression across the three stages on offer.

Upon gaining control of your character, Windlands is an immediately exciting prospect; levels are huge and colourful and veer off in multiple directions into the distance in front of you, seemingly massive playgrounds for you to swing and parkour (the game’s bold description for very basic jumping/wall-jumping) around at your leisure.

However, it quickly becomes apparent that Windlands can’t live up to its promise for a variety of reasons. Firstly, traversal, the very thing the game is built around and the one thing it really needed to nail, just isn’t really any fun. The first couple of times you grapple a bush or wall and swing across a chasm it’s kinda exciting but then you get to a tricky section or try to get yourself somewhere specific and realise that it’s just not very responsive, it feels sloppy and you’ll spend a lot of time dangling off bushes trying desperately to figure out how to gain enough momentum to move on. You’ll also feel like smashing your controller, or at least I did, when you fail to make a straightforward jump between two simple ledges for the 100th time because the distance you cover with a jump as well as the distance you travel when you land seems so random.

It says a lot about the traversal system in Windlands that it’s at its very best as a game when played on Easy Mode, and I honestly don’t think I can remember another game I’ve played where that’s the case. On the easiest setting you can grapple any object you want to help propel you along, whereas higher difficulties restrict you to greenery only. I initially started playing on normal mode and spent a ridiculous amount of time screaming into my headset because I kept losing all my forward momentum crashing into trees, falling off ledges and dangling hopelessly out of bushes like Peter Parker after a massive bong. It doesn’t feel like a system that grows on you or one that you can learn to master; it feels half-assed.

Another problem with Windlands, ignoring the weak story, is that the three areas you play in across the course of the game, Jungle, City and Sky, are all practically identical bar the fact they’re slightly different colours. I could probably live with this if they weren’t also so empty. Beyond grappling from tree to tree and picking up a crystal or tablet here and there, there’s nothing else to see or do. There are no enemies, no threats and the gameplay doesn’t evolve from what you’re presented with in the opening couple of minutes, which again would be fine if the system of traversal had any depth or finesse to it whatsoever.

Having said all of this, it’s true that Windlands is at least an actual game, not a tech demo or a PSVR “experience”. It has a start, middle and end, a story of sorts and enough hours to muddle through that, if it’s your kind of game, you’ll feel like you got your money’s worth. At £18.99 it’s also not nearly as expensive as other, much worse, VR games that I’ve played on Sony’s device (I’m talking about you Robinson: The Journey).

Psytec must also be commended for the comprehensive comfort settings they’ve provided. Windlands allows you to swing, jump and (mostly) plummet massive distances very quickly and, if you’re not an idiot like me who ignores all of the provided warnings on account of testosterone, you’ll find the game has some combination of settings which allows you to do all of this comfortably and without the need to lie in a darkened room for a couple of hours afterwards.

Overall, Windlands is a pretty great idea that could have been an essential PSVR title had more thought been put into its traversal. With a much more precise means of movement married to interesting levels designed to encourage experimentation and mastery of parkour and grappling techniques, this could have been a wonderful playground to learn and get lost in; as it is it’s a disappointing, bland and frustrating experience with very little sense of progression or reward.

The post Windlands Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

With each new version throwaway new modes have been added but it’s the stellar base game that has always been the main draw here, a base game that has gone almost completely unchanged along the way, and Super Stardust Ultra VR does absolutely nothing to change this.

The big new addition, in fact the only new addition here, is Invasion, an ill-advised VR-exclusive mode which sees players enter the cockpit of their craft, blasting those familiar robots, aliens and rocks from a whole new perspective on the planet’s surface. It’s a pretty terrible idea which falls flat for a number of reasons and I suspect most players will have reverted back to the classic arcade mode quite quickly.

My main issue with Invasion is that, due, I’m assuming, to the extra processing power being used to drive the VR experience, all-important Stardust elements suffer. Enemy numbers are decreased, maps are smaller and feel flat and boring, there are less weapon and point upgrades to collect and the whole thing just feels much, much slower. If you’ve ever played Super Stardust, and who hasn’t given it was offered free to all PlayStation players by way of an apology in the wake of the PSN account data leak back in 2011, you’ll know that taking speed and enemies out of the equation is a big no-no.

Super Stardust has always been about that beautifully hypnotic death ballet, the addictive rhythmic groove a player falls into as they balance switching between weapon types to blast enemies and break apart asteroids, weaving and shooting, picking your moments, waiting until the very last second to unleash bombs or collect upgrades, every aspect of the game’s mechanics combining perfectly, it’s one of the best twin-stick shooters ever made and it’s exactly why the base game has remained unchanged over all these iterations we’ve seen in the last ten years.

Outside of the new VR mode the classic game remains untouched, although you can now get down to racking up massive scores on those familiar planets while floating in VR space above the action, it adds absolutely nothing to the gameplay and to be honest I’d rather play it normally on a TV as the picture is clearer and mucking about with the PSVR headset can be off-putting when the action gets frantic.

There really isn’t much more to say about Super Stardust Ultra VR; it’s exactly the same game you’ve been playing for a decade with a totally inconsequential and unnecessary VR mode stuck in there to amuse you for an hour or so. If you have PSVR (or even if you don’t) and you’ve never played Super Stardust I highly recommend you stop what you’re doing and run into the streets to find a copy right now. If, on the other hand, you’ve seen it all before, I’d struggle to give you any reason why you should go spend your money on this version. It’s a classic case of launch line-up filler, a cash grab that does absolutely nothing to justify its existence as a VR-exclusive title.

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The first thing that strikes me as odd about Carnival Games on PSVR is that Sony’s machine suggests children under the age of 12 shouldn’t use their VR unit, which begs the question: who on Earth is this game aimed at? Is it aimed at me? Is it aimed at adults? If I wanted to throw a ball at some bottles I could probably do it for less than the £400+ it’s gonna cost me to get in on this action.

Anyway, let’s talk about what’s on offer here for anyone who hasn’t played it before or is genuinely interested to know. Carnival Games consists of four themed areas comprised of three different games each. You’ve got throwing balls at bottles, hoop toss, Skee-ball, some shooting galleries, a climbing wall and even a haunted house. To be fair there’s probably enough variety here if only the games on offer weren’t the kind of thing that, in reality, you only enjoy for two minutes while off your face on sugar from the massive candy floss you bought in a desperate effort to impress a date. These minigames just aren’t interesting to play; they’re the opposite of interesting, whatever that is.

However, each to their own. Perhaps you really, really love hoop toss and you’ve bought a PSVR especially to play it, well, bad news for you too because the motion tracking is generally pretty iffy here so you don’t even get to experience very accurate mediocrity.

Games are played via two floating hands on-screen, controlled by two inexpensive PlayStation Move controllers. It should be a simple and intuitive set-up that anyone can get their head around but it fails because the tracking feels off, even a game as simple as chucking a ball at some targets requires that you adapt a wholly unnatural throwing technique to achieve any degree of success. I genuinely couldn’t get my ball to go in a straight line for the first ten minutes I was playing.

The control problems extend to other annoyances like trying to move around the gaudy central plaza or even just attempting to leave a game. I found myself having to twist around in my seat and flail hopelessly in the general direction of the exit sign which, because this is VR, is awkwardly placed off to one side and behind the player.

Are you still interested? OK. The aim of Carnival Games is to play minigames and collect tickets so that you can unlock more themed areas and games as well as very low quality toys which you can, if you have some sort of weird low resolution object fetish, view in a playroom. It takes about an hour or so to unlock every minigame on offer, although, to be fair, it did feel far longer than that.

Carnival Games wasn’t a good game on Wii, it’s simple, boring and it looks its age. It also doesn’t belong on or benefit in any way from being brought over to VR, it adds nothing to the game. I felt less immersed here than I did playing it on the Wii, where at least the controls worked properly.

A collection of minigames is something that could work really well on PSVR; with some decent graphics and a strong collection of games designed from the ground up to utilise the immersive qualities of PSVR you could be looking at an essential purchase on the platform. Carnival games falls so short of achieving any of this that it’s genuinely hard to think of a reason for anyone to buy it.

The post Carnival Games VR Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

It’s a perfect set up for a VR game, lost in space on a dinosaur-infested planet, which is brought spectacularly to life by Crytek, who have delivered the most graphically impressive PSVR game to date here. Unfortunately, the intriguing premise and stunning graphics are pretty much completely laid to waste by dire gameplay involving nothing more than a handful of boring object manipulation puzzles and some frustrating traversal elements.

The first thing you’ll notice with Robinson The Journey is that, for all its epic vistas, lush tropical valleys and waterfalls, the actual areas you can move around in are tiny and uninspired. The game, for all the talk of how epic its setting is, is in fact comprised of five small areas connected by small corridors, each of which contains a missing HIGS unit to find and scan for information, a very basic object manipulation or environmental puzzle and a minigame where you redirect the flow of electricity via your pal HIGS. That’s it.

As an example of the gameplay, at one point you’ll be tasked with rescuing a baby longneck dinosaur from some mud, which sounds quite exciting. However, in order to do so you’ll simply use the tool in Robin’s right hand to lift a piece of debris, holding R2 to hoover it up and then place it in front of the dinosaur, and that’s it. In terms of interaction that’s as deep as the gameplay gets. Your smart tool has two modes, scan and lift; you complete most puzzles by lifting debris and making bridges for yourself or grabbing an object and throwing it. In between these “puzzles” you can scan wildlife to add to a catalogue of creatures, the most basic of busywork to distract from the fact there really isn’t anything else to do.

In the most exciting area of the game in terms of atmosphere, a dark jungle area full of raptors, it took me all of five minutes to figure out how to do the puzzles and move on. I used my smart tool to pick up a can and smack a piece of fruit from a tree so that a dinosaur would move out of my path, then I used the exact same method to hit a curled up plant to reveal the solution to the puzzle and complete the area. I then spent about thirty minutes trying to figure out where I had to go next which is, at every turn, the hardest part of the game. The frustration with traversal is compounded by the fact motion sickness becomes an issue during extended sessions, unless you use some of the more constrained control settings which employ a pie-chart movement style to help with headaches.

Moving around the environments is done at a plodding pace with no ability to run, and again I’m aware that this is probably to reduce motion sickness but it really doesn’t help when you do so much backtracking due to the very poor signposting between puzzles. I very rarely have to consult walkthrough guides to help me finish a game but I found myself doing so on more than one occasion with Robinson due to the fact there was absolutely no way of telling where to go next or how to move the game on at certain points, other than walking round in circles looking for a vine or climbable ledge that I’d missed.

Speaking of climbing, this is probably the most immersive part of the game, controlled by using the L and R bumpers to grab ledges, one for each hand. It works fine but it can be fiddly and falling to grab a ledge results in instant death and the loss of a not-insignificant amount of progress due to poor checkpointing.

Robinson was also very obviously designed to be controlled via MOVE: the tool which Robin uses to interact with objects looks exactly like a MOVE controller, it seems like something that was meant to be implemented but for whatever reason was left out and it’s a shame because it really would have added to what little immersion there is here and it feels like a lazy omission, especially considering the game’s ludicrous price tag.

Besides the puzzles and climbing you’ve got your two companions, HIGS and Laika. Laika can follow you around and fetch items, she’ll go where you point your laser and can also perform a couple of simple tricks, it’s cute for a couple of minutes but totally unnecessary save for a crucial bit of teamwork right at the end of the game, which I won’t spoil for those foolhardy enough to reach it.

HIGS proves useful in solving the electricity based puzzles in each area but beyond that he’s C-3PO with all of the whining and none of the humour, constantly putting you down and reminding you that without his help you wouldn’t survive. I couldn’t help but feel grateful that every other HIGS unit I found along the way was dead.

It feels like such an almighty shame that a game this beautiful, with such a compelling premise, should be let down by a failure to include anything approaching interesting gameplay. Robinson: The Journey shows off what can be achieved technically on PSVR, it looks astounding and it’s undeniable that looking up at a giant dinosaur as it towers over you is an awe-inspiring experience in VR, however, it’s not £54 worth of awe. Perhaps if the entry price to this adventure was more in line with the likes of Rush of Blood or Batman VR at £15, it could be more readily recommended just for the sake of seeing what PSVR is capable of. As it is, Robinson: The Journey comes across as a very expensive, very beautiful and very boring tech demo.

Back when Robinson Crusoe was originally published in 1719, it had an extremely long-winded and detailed title, which, if applied to this game would go something like, “The Life and Extremely Tedious Adventures of Robin, Who Lived for God Knows How Long With His Annoying Tin Buddy HIGS on Titan III; Shipwrecked and Forced to Carry Out The Most Tediously Simple Tasks Until Motion Sickness Overwhelmed Them.”

The post Robinson: The Journey Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

However, if you’re willing to accept that the graphical downgrade is a necessary evil to keep the driving mechanics and sense of speed intact, once you settle in, find your rhythm, turn off those braking aids, crank up the difficulty and start focusing on racing your best race, you may find most of that initial disappointment disappearing into the distance behind you. The essence of what made DriveClub such a great driving game in the first place, its exhilarating arcade handling, is still right here, in VR; now you’re actually in the car, on the road, and it’s really quite something to behold.

Racing games are a perfect fit for VR and it’s amazing how the simple act of slipping on your headset can make the most mundane things seem almost magical. Driving through a tunnel, taking a sharp bend, moving through a tight pack of opponents, pelting down a steep hill at top speed – you’ve done it all before but it’s never felt as good as this. Take a look around the stunningly detailed interior of the sports car you’re sitting in, look behind you into the back seat, glance at your wing mirrors or down at your gears, hell, even stick your head out the window and have a look back down the road. It doesn’t matter how much of a gimmick it is, it’s fantastic, it’s immersive and it adds enough excitement to the experience to go some way towards compensating for what’s been lost graphically.

In terms of content this is also perhaps the most fully-featured game in the PSVR line-up so far. Most of the content from the original game is here and it also includes five new tracks for veterans to get excited about, although unfortunately your old save data isn’t compatible with this version so you’ll be starting out from scratch. There are a ton of tracks to get to grips with and cars to unlock, all of which still handle differently, and even the multiplayer mode makes it over intact, although I have to say the lobbies have been pretty quiet in my experience and it’s a regular occurrence to find yourself racing against just one other human opponent.

The AI opponent count has also been downsized which is a shame and it takes away from the frantic nature of race starts and tight jams as the field moves through the first few corners of a track. Elsewhere, however, all of the old online stats, clubs and challenges remain intact and racing to beat a friend or rival’s top drift or cornering score is as addictive and seamless here as it’s ever been. This is a full-fat version of DriveClub at a price point that puts some more expensive, less content-rich PSVR launch titles to shame.

Overall, DriveClub VR is a graphically downgraded but fully-featured version of the original game that retains the fast and addictive arcade driving but loses a lot of its graphical polish. If you’re willing to overlook some blurry visuals and get down to the serious business of racing you’ll find that there’s still a lot to love here and, for a launch title, it’s an impressive first outing for racing games on PSVR.

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It’s early in the game for PSVR but we’ve already seen exciting potential for horror games utilising Sony’s latest hardware. Until Dawn: Rush of Blood, the various Resident Evil 7 demos and, to a lesser extent, Here They Lie, have all proven that the immersion afforded by VR lends itself perfectly to scaring the life out of players, and so it was with much anticipation that I slipped on my PSVR headset to investigate Weeping Doll.

The story in Oasis Games’ effort is that you are an English housemaid to a Japanese family consisting of a mother, father and two twin girls, who live in a suitably large and horrifically decorated house. One of the girls has a birthmark on her face and as a result is shunned and mistreated by her parents. The game begins with you receiving a terrified phone call from the mother informing you that she is under attack from some sort of presence, but the call is abruptly cut off and it is up to you to go to the house and explore its rooms, piecing together the clues left scattered around to get to the bottom of what has happened.

It’s a totally generic set-up but one that still could have worked due to the fact you’re thrown so absolutely into every environment and situation through VR, and the house itself is a suitably imposing setting, however, there are so many technical problems holding you back that you’ll already be completely infuriated before you realise that the extremely short story was going nowhere anyway.

The first nail in Weeping Doll’s coffin is its controls. Using the shoulder buttons to rotate your character you then project a silhouette of yourself around the space in front of you using the right analog stick, pressing X to teleport yourself to that location, where you can then rotate around some more. Objects are lifted in either your left or right hand by pressing the L2 or R2 buttons. The whole thing is so laborious that I was having a harder time keeping on top of what button I needed to press to move where I wanted to or interact with an object than I was with the rubbish puzzles.

This moves us on to this game’s second major problem. The puzzles in this game are excruciating. Almost every single one that I came across had an immediately obvious solution; however, due to the controls and the often very blurry nature of the visuals, even though I knew how to proceed I found myself struggling to manage. There’s also some nasty buffering of certain textures and areas in rooms which, in one situation, led to me being unable to read a vital clue as the image was so pixelated.

On top of the abysmal puzzles and controls, the voice-acting is some of the worst I’ve ever heard in a video game, and the little animated sequences which pop up occasionally to move the story along are amateurish and come across as rushed and sloppy.

Persevering with all of these negatives will see you rewarded with a short, uninspired story which fails to generate a single scare of any significance whatsoever, in fact I can’t remember being in any way frightened by anything beyond my inability to move around a room without almost suffering a stroke due to the controls.

There’s no doubt that horror games and shorter horror experiences have a bright future on PSVR, we’ve seen it already, and even less successful efforts such as Here They Lie manage to generate their fair share of tension, whereas the likes of Rush of Blood are an absolute blast, almost hilariously successful in their ability to scare players through the immersion provided by the medium. So, Weeping Doll really has no excuse here. This is a lazy cash in, a shoddy waste of your time with nothing to recommend beyond the fact it’s one of the cheapest games in the PSVR catalogue thus far.

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The key to Headmaster’s success is in the simplicity of its central idea and the skill with which this idea has been carried off. Tasked with nothing more than using your head to hit footballs at targets, you don’t even need a controller to play, just the PSVR headset and your noggin. You’ll then be shuttled through a variety of lessons, earning one to three stars depending on your performance; these stars will then count towards unlocking final exams which will test all the skills you have learned thus far. Simple.

In less capable hands such a slight premise could have been a short-lived experience, better suited to a tech demo than a retail game. However, Frame Interactive have crafted an unexpectedly addictive and fun little game which provides a proper challenge in single player as well as a fun party game to play with friends, and this is all down to how well Headmaster utilises VR technology.

The basic act of heading footballs is beautifully realised here and everything onscreen reacts perfectly to the strength and direction you place on your shots. Any sort of lag or error in hit detection would have been disastrous but these problems have been avoided completely and as a result there is a certain amount of depth to the gameplay. Less skilful players can still generally coast through levels earning the minimum amount of points, and the game can be blown through quite quickly if you adopt this approach, but there is much satisfaction to be had in becoming skilful enough to ace everything that’s thrown at you – and everything will be thrown at you.

As you progress through Headmaster’s lessons, Frame Interactive up the ante in all sorts of fun and unexpected ways. You’ll find yourself heading balls strapped with explosives at walls of cardboard boxes, shooting colour-coded balls through hoops, trying to smash a piñata by heading balls at it as hard as you possibly can and lobbing and looping tough trick shots beyond the reach of your mortal enemy, the thing you fear most in the world, the goalkeeper. It’s hard to convey just how much fun doing these things is and it’s the kind of experience that could only be achieved in VR, it feels like you’re actually hitting footballs with your head, which in turn makes it all the more fun when you find an explosive ball, giant piece of wood or some other random object coming hurtling towards your face.

Beyond the flawless mechanics, Headmaster is full of humour and although some of its Portal-esque jokes fall flat and the idea of a sarcastic voice blaring out at you from a nearby loudspeaker isn’t exactly original, it’s still a nice addition to the gameplay and gives the whole thing a charm and uniqueness that is quite unexpected.

Overall then, Headmaster is quite a surprise, one of the more polished, fun and easy to play launch games available for PSVR. I’ve pumped far more hours into it than I expected I might and in doing so suffered absolutely no motion sickness or headaches as everything in-game is crisp, clean and easy to navigate. No doubt this sort of VR experience will become harder to recommend as the platform’s library grows and develops more full-on gaming experiences, but, in the here and now, so soon after launch, Headmaster is an easy-to-recommend, addictive and fun little game that is a worthy addition to any PSVR library.

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